Bottlenecks and recent improvement strategies of ceramic membranes in membrane distillation applications: A review

Ceramic membranes have received more attention currently from researchers in membrane distillation (MD) applications due to their outstanding properties. However, despite their superior mechanical, thermochemical stability, and resistance to harsh operating conditions, several bottlenecks still limit their applications in MD. Although there are several published articles on ceramic membranes in MD, the uniqueness of this review lies in the fact that it discusses the critical bottlenecks that significantly affect the performance of ceramic membranes in long-term operation and limit their scale-up to commercial MD applications. Furthermore, recent advances, strategies, and techniques to mitigate these limitations have also been discussed. A discussion on high ceramic membrane fabrication costs and mitigation strategies using alternative low-cost ceramic materials to erstwhile conventional ceramic materials has been presented. In addition, the inherent problems of the brittleness and wetting/fouling of ceramic membranes and recent advances in strengthening ceramic membranes and fouling/wetting control via the development of superhydrophobic and omniphobic ceramic surfaces in MD have been addressed. Consequently, technical bottlenecks that still exist despite recent development in ceramic membranes for MD applications have been highlighted and future research direction in developing robust ceramic membranes in MD applications has been elaborated.