Fouling in Membrane Filtration and Remediation Methods

The growth of the membrane technologies has fell far behind the initial anticipation, one of the major obstacles, which hinders more widespread of its application, is that the filtration performance inevitably decreases with filtration time. This phenomenon is commonly termed as membrane fouling, which refers to the blockage of membrane pores during filtration by the combination of sieving and adsorption of particulates and compounds onto the membrane surface or within the membrane pores. Pore blockage reduces the permeate production rate and increases the complexity of the membrane filtration operation. This is the most challenging issue for further membrane development and applications.