Challenges and outlooks of photocatalytic membrane: System scaling up to pilot-scale

As a new field of materials development, photocatalytic membranes have been making progress by moving out from laboratory into real applications in water treatment and/or energy storage, making its presence influential in the body of literature. This chapter reviews the progress in semiconductor materials and their applications in water treatment and energy storage to mitigate their impacts on the environment. To bridge the existing research gaps in the body of literature, this chapter critically evaluates challenges in pilot studies of photocatalytic membrane. Challenges and perspectives of photocatalytic membrane are elaborated. It is anticipated that this would contribute to new understanding in the photocatalytic membrane on the relationship between materials’ structures and photoreaction performance that paves the way for a new direction of photocatalysis technology in pilot scales. Subsequently, the development of its next generation allows an efficient collection of the sunlight to catalyze chemical reactions, promoting solar energy utilization.