Abstract
Water scarcity is becoming one of the biggest issues for humanity, as the countries under water stress are continuously increasing. The aim of this chapter is to report about the efficiency of membrane distillation for the treatment of both wastewater and seawater. Membrane distillation is an expanding membrane technology that has aroused great interest among membranologists around the world. The typical four-membrane distillation configurations were investigated for carrying out tests on membranes with tubular geometry: direct contact membrane distillation, air gap membrane distillation, vacuum membrane distillation, and sweep gas membrane distillation. In addition to the hydrophobic microporous commercial fiber membranes, studies were conducted on the preparation of “specifically designed” membranes to be used in membrane distillation. This is because the existing commercial membranes were mainly developed for microfiltration purposes and do not present features that are typically needed for membrane distillation applications, like high hydrophobicity, high porosity, high liquid entry pressure, and so on.
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