Membrane engineering

Lisitzin, D., Hasson, D. and Semiat, R.(June 2006) Membrane crystallizer for increased desalination recovery, ECI -Advanced Membranes Technology III. Membrane Engineering for Process Intensification, Cetraro, Calabria, Italy. Awerbuch, L. (1997) Dual purpose power desalination/hybrid systems/energy and economics. IDA Desalination Seminar, Cairo, Egypt. 

Some of the largest plants for seawater desalination, wastewater treatment and gas separation are already based on membrane engineering. For example, the Ashkelon Desalination Plant for seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO), in Israel, has been fully operational since December 2005 and produces more than 100 million m3 of desalinated water per year. One of the largest submerged membrane bioreactor unit in the world was recently built in Porto Marghera (Italy) to treat tertiary water. The growth in membrane installations for water treatment in the past decade has resulted in a decreased cost of desalination facilities, with the consequence that the cost of the reclaimed water for membrane plants has also been reduced. 

The continuous interest and growth of the various new industrial processes related to the life sciences will also require significant contributions from membrane engineering. It is hoped that future research would provide deeper insight on the precise mechanisms involved, which would show new direction for research in membrane science and applications. It is, however, important to recognize that applicability of electroporation has been demonstrated in a variety of bacteria, yeast, and mammalian cells and some applications are ready for exploitation while many new technologies seem potentially possible. 

The early membranologists have always been optimistic about the possibilities of membrane operations, but the scientific and technical results reached today are even superior to the expectation. A variety of technical challenges must be overcome to permit the successful industrial apphcation of new membrane solutions. Chapter 43, on the same theme, presents the future scenario of membrane processes covering chemical, biotechnological, pharmaceutical applications, etc., and also focusing fumre progresses in membrane engineering. 

However, these efforts need to be combined with new research works in the process dynamics and in the study of advanced control systems applied to integrated membrane systems. These multidisciplinary smdies will offer interesting opportunities for the future development of membrane engineering. 

Undoubtedly, this new kind of integrated approach is well representative of what should be membrane engineering, with final objectives clearly defined, the right hypothesis and choice of simple equations for modeling, a realistic representation of real complex solutions and the set-up of efficient simulation tools involving successive intra- and extrapolation steps. It appears to be easily extended to other membrane operations, in other fields of applications. It should provide stakeholders with information needed to make their decision costs, safety, product quality, environment impact, and so on of new process. Coupled with the need to check the robustness of the new plant and the quality of final output, it should constitute the right way to develop the use of membranes as essential instruments for process intensification with industrial units at work. 

Lee RE. Membrane engineering to rejuvenate the aging brain. Can Med Assoc J 1985 132 325-327. 

Syngas Membrane Engineering Design and Scaie-Up issues. Appiication of Ceramic Oxygen Conducting Membranes... 

I 8 Syngas Membrane Engineering Design and Scale-Up Issues... 

E. Drioli, A.I. Stankiewicz, F. Macedonio, Membrane engineering in process intensification—An overview, Journal of Membrane Science 380 (2011) 1-8. 

---