Membrane Distillation for Aqueous Feeds Treatment

Abstract

Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermally-based membrane operation in which the distillation of aqueous feeds occurs through a membrane. Although first works on MD appeared in the literature in the 1960s, the application of MD has been limited, mainly due to the lack of membranes and modules specifically designed, as well as to the thermal demand. Nevertheless, MD attracted the attention of many researchers, and significant improvements of the MD performance have been achieved. In this chapter, MD features, drawbacks, and possible solutions are presented and discussed.