Ceramic-based membranes for water and wastewater treatment

A critical review on current status and future perspectives of ceramic-based membranes for water and wastewater treatment is given. Common ceramic membranes made of alumina, zirconia, titania, silica and zeolite are described, and their advantages and disadvantages are compared and discussed. Composite-type ceramic membranes, including those of ceramic/ceramic, ceramic incorporated with nanoparticles, ceramic-metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and ceramic-polymer are analysed in terms of the improvement and the added functionalities for water and wastewater treatment. A summary on the manufacturing technologies of ceramic-based membranes is presented, where it has gone much beyond the conventional ceramic processing. Though polymeric membranes are currently still the dominant, the development of ceramic membranes is rapidly growing owing to their apparent advantages, such as high stability, long lifetime, high flux and low fouling, while there is constant driving towards the reduction in production cost. With the newly emerging advances in both materials and processing, ceramic-based membranes are promising and will soon become key players in water technology.