Preface

The purpose of this book is to provide some relevant examples of how membrane operations can contribute to an industrial sustainable growth. In many industrial fields, membrane operations present many advantages over conventional systems in terms, for example, of energy consumption, reduction of environmental impact and product quality. Furthermore, successful examples of conventional operations integrated with membrane processes have been also reported in different industrial productions within the logic of the process intensification strategy. Following the same logic, for what concerns the content of this book, each chapter deals with a specific area of membrane technology and includes information on the basic principles, commercial applications and an overview of current research and development.