Ultrafiltration, Microfiltration, Nanofiltration and Reverse Osmosis in Integrated Membrane Processes

From the end of the 1990s, hybrid membrane processes have been developped with the purpose to improve performance in terms of product quality, plant compactness, environmental impact, and energy use. Examples of membrane integrated processes include multi-stages pressure-driven membrane processes (ultrafiltration (UF), microfiltration (MF), nanofiltration (NF), reverse osmosis (RO)) and pressure-driven membrane processes associated to membrane distillation (MD), electrodialysis (ED), or membrane bioreactors (MBRs). Applications concern seawater desalination, wastewater treatment, separation in biotechnology and food industries, and chemical production. A number of other hybrid systems are expected to reach industrial applications such as membrane emulsification in the overall production of food beverage or cosmetic and pharmaceutical preparations or membrane extraction in biofuels production. As the feeds are complex and multicomponent suspensions, the optimization and prediction of these hybrid membrane processes are challenging and need further investigation.