Advancements in Nanoenabled Membrane Distillation for a Sustainable Water‐Energy‐Environment Nexus

Abstract

AbstractThe emergence of nano innovations in membrane distillation (MD) has garnered increasing scientific interest. This enables the exploration of state‐of‐the‐art nano‐enabled MD membranes with desirable properties, which significantly improve the efficiency and reliability of the MD process and open up opportunities for achieving a sustainable water‐energy‐environment (WEE) nexus. This comprehensive review provides broad coverage and in‐depth analysis of recent innovations in nano‐enabled MD membranes, focusing on their role in achieving desirable properties, such as strong liquid‐repellence, high resistance to scaling, fouling, and wetting, as well as efficient self‐heating and self‐cleaning functionalities. The recent developments in nano‐enhanced photothermal‐catalytic applications for water‐energy co‐generation within a single MD system are also discussed. Furthermore, the bottlenecks are identified that impede the scale‐up of nanoenhanced MD membranes and a future roadmap is proposed for their sustainable commercialiation. This holistic overview is expected to inspire future research and development efforts to fully harness the potential of nano‐enabled MD membranes to achieve sustainable integration of water, energy, and the environment.