Osmotic Membrane Distillation - A Brief Review

In recent years, osmotic membrane distillation is gaining importance as an attractive/complementary athermal membrane process. Osmotic membrane distillation is having potential to concentrate the biomolecules/liquids to a very high level under mild operating condition, without product damage. Further, this process can be employed as a pre-concentration step to reduce water load significantly on subsequent processing steps. The present review exclusively deals with process features, theoretical aspects involving water transport mechanism, influence of various process conditions on transmembrane flux along with recent application of osmotic membrane distillation process. Also, suggestions for future work and possible process integration of osmotic membrane distillation with other processes are also discussed.