Smart polymeric composite membranes for wastewater treatment

In recent years, lack of access to safe and pure water is one of the most critical issues in the world. Membrane technology is a promising technique for water treatment and is expected to play an increasingly important role in treatment areas such as drinking water, brackish and seawater desalination, and wastewater in the upcoming years, both on a domestic and on an industrial scale. Polymers and polymeric composite-based materials have been widely used as commercial membrane materials due to their wide range of advantages in terms of structure, morphology, physiochemical, and filtration characteristics. Currently, the usage of smart materials for polymeric membrane synthesis has intensified the membrane research toward a new class of membranes development and their applications in various fields. These stimuli-responsive smart materials could be designed to alter the membrane structure and physicochemical properties such as hydrophilicity, porosity, charge density, thermal and mechanical stability, etc. This chapter aims to summarize the recent scientific and technological advances of stimuli-responsive smart polymeric membrane materials for water and wastewater treatment applications. Various unique attributes of smart responsive materials, challenges, and future research directions in developing smart polymeric membranes are also discussed.