Membrane Science and Membrane Engineering: a Successful Story

Membrane engineering is one of the disciplines most involved in the technological innovations necessary to face the problems characterizing the world today and in future such as water shortage, raw material depletion, and energy consumption. Membrane operations contribute to solving these problems, and the potentialities of membrane operations have been widely recognized in the last few years. In this work, an overview of membrane applications and their perspectives in the field of membrane materials, membrane modelling and water treatment will be analyzed. The scope of this study is to show how membranes, membrane operations and their integration could contribute to the redesign of membrane engineering in the logic of the process intensification strategy.