Osmotic and Filtration Processes for the Removal of Emerging Water Pollutants

Emerging pollutants (EPs) in water and wastewater are one of the global water quality challenges and have substantially adverse and serious effects on ecosystems and human health. However, the presence of these EP’s is generally in minute quantities ranging from microgram per liter to nanogram per liter in the environment. These emerging water pollutants may contain endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs), personal care and pharmaceutical products, surfactants, hormones, steroids, etc. EPs can also be generated from the synthesis of new chemicals and their by-products in industries. Considering the potential impact of these EPs, an appropriate and effective wastewater treatment approach is needed, which can remove the wide variety of these EPs. Membrane technologies have gained more attention in water filtration processes as membrane technology can remove the emerging water and wastewater pollutants with different membranes. The presence of the membrane barrier is one of the main advantages of the membrane filtration process, which offers a wide variety of supplementary adsorption mechanisms for EPs. The pressure-driven membrane filtration processes include micro-filtration (MF), nano-filtration (NF), ultra-filtration (UF), and reverse osmosis (RO). In contrast, the osmotically driven membrane filtration processes (ODMFP) include pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) and forward osmosis (FO) only. This chapter will review the major characteristics, advancements, and principles of NF, RO, ODMFP, and other emerging membrane filtration technology for treating EPs in water and wastewater

Keywords: Emerging pollutants, Filtration processes, Forward osmosis, Osmotically driven membranes, Pressure-driven membranes.