Exploration of multifaceted domain of advanced membrane separation processes for wastewater treatment and desalination – A review

Wastewater treatment is a crucial component of water resource management, essential for ensuring water availability for reuse and protecting both environmental health and human well-being. The rise in the volume of modern-day wastewater, often containing critical pollutants, and lack of advancements in treatment processes leads to the discharge of untreated or poorly treated wastewater into freshwater sources. While conventional treatment methods offer some effectiveness, they fall short in producing high-quality treated water and addressing key challenges associated with it for domestic and industrial applications. This has intensified the demand for advanced separation techniques to handle current wastewater management issues. Among these, membrane technology has garnered significant attention for its ability to remove organic contaminants, toxic substances, and other low-concentration nutrients. So, this review aims to emphasize the importance of advanced wastewater separation techniques, particularly their role in enhancing treatment efficiency and resource recovery. It mainly evaluates the performance of integrated and hybrid separation technologies for wastewater treatment with respect to membrane technology. The idea of this paper is to summarize the evolution in conventional membrane technology by discussing the integration of different membrane techniques with one another or with various advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) for membrane performance enhancement, including their fouling and wetting mitigation strategies. Additionally, the review explores the application of novel nanocomposites in membrane technology, assessing their effectiveness and potential for addressing major drawbacks associated with membrane separation process during wastewater treatment. The paper concludes with a discussion on future research directions in this evolving field.