Polymeric membranes as sustainable material for water desalination: a review

Affordable potable water is the most demanded issue of whole humanity. As almost 33% of the earth is covered with seawater, which can be used with the help of various desalination techniques in sustainable commercial processes. In many commercial processes affordable and economic membranes are used which contain different types of blends that are used for desalination. The commercial or traditional membranes are synthesized and fabricated with fillers like cellulose, thin-film composite, chitosan (CS) and chitin, along with mixed oxides for filtering the sea water. To overcome the limitations of the traditional methods, pure membranes are modified precisely, which also improves their performance. Further, many researchers confirmed the mixing of 2 or 3 types of membranes to prepare a composite polymer membrane which has better performance due to higher adsorption capacity (AC). The mixed matrix membranes and metal oxide membranes generally have tunable physical properties, which influences the AC. The enhanced AC is due to high porosity, greater surface area, high permeability, high hydrophobicity, high salt rejection, and high stability (mechanical, chemical, and thermal). This chapter lists the various types of polymeric composite membranes and their performances for the desalination process.