Membrane technologies for water treatment and agroindustrial sectors

Although water is essential for human survival and progress, it is distributed very unevenly and with a different purity over the surface of the earth. A variety of contaminants can be present in raw water, depending on its origin. The size of these contaminants ranges from the micrometer (e.g. bacteria) to the tenths of a nanometer order (ions). Membrane processes like microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis could be a solution for an advanced physical treatment of water for drinking purposes as well as for agroindustrial sectors. Many applications are well assessed and are expanding very quickly; however, to obtain an ever-growing performance, it is necessary to prepare membranes with tailored structure and transport properties. Characterisation methods play also a role of paramount importance for the selection of the more appropriate membrane for the above-mentioned applications. In this work the main membrane preparation techniques and characterisation methods will be reviewed and discussed.