Driven by It can be

It is defined essentially Pressure

Thick/Thin
as a Barrier which
separates 2 phases Concentration Liquid/Solid
& restricts
Symmetric/Asymmetric
transport of Temperature
various molecules Natural/Synthetic
Electrical potential
in a selective Gradients
manner. Neutral/Charged

Homogeneous/Heterog-
eneous
 In 1748 - Abbe Jean-Antoine Nollet; French physicist separated
degassed alcohol using pigs bladder.
1824, Rene-Joachim-Henri Dutrochet, French physiologist
introduced Osmosis: Movement of water through a biological
membrane.
1846 Discovery of nitrocellulose (gave scope to MF)
1855 Frick discovered Cellulose nitrate membranes.
1861- Thomas Graham (Father of Modern Dialysis): Coined
Dialysis - Separated Dissolved substances based on mol.wt., n
concentration.
1865 Moritz Traube invented first artificial membrane using
copper ferrocyanide precipitates.
1875- Wilhelm Friedrich Philipp Pferrer: Made the membranes
to withstand operational pressures.
 1906-Bechhold devised a technique to prepare nitrocellulose
membranes of graded pore size .
1930s-Micro porous colloidal membranes became commercially
available.
1950s- Development n Significant use of MF technology in the
filtration of drinking water samples at the end of World War II:
Research effort was sponsored by US army.
1959- Samuel Yuster made a breakthrough in RO by the invention of
Loeb-Sourirajan membrane at UCLA.
By 1960-Elements of modern membrane science had been developed
such as Gas Separation, Membrane Distillation etc.
In the early 80s- Henis &Tripodi made industrial GS: economically
feasible.
Kober and coworkers developed Pervaporation. Later in 2000s
modified for large scale applications.
 Membrane process: the feed stream is divided into two
streams:

Retentate (concentrate) stream

Permeate stream

Either the concentrate or permeate stream is the product of our

interest.
 IDEAL
REAL MEMBRANE
Permeate Feed

MEMBRANE Driving Force

Phase 2 Phase 1
 Specifically used for the separation of dissolved ions from water
(dissolved solids, bacteria, viruses, salts, proteins, and other germs)
Charged ions and all other materials greater than or equal to .001 .
Essentially a pressure driven membrane diffusion process for
separating dissolved solutes.
Relatively a low energy process.
Smallest pore structure, 5-15 A0 (0.5 nm - 1.5 nm)
allows only the smallest organic molecules and unchanged solutes
to pass through the semi-permeable membrane along with the water

>95-99% of inorganic salts and charged organics will also be rejected

by the membrane due to charge repulsion established at the
membrane surface