Over the past decades, with the rapid increment in world
population and limited availability of fresh water resources, clean
water shortage has been identified as a major worldwide crisis in
the foreseeable future. In this regard, desalination of saline water
has great potencies to suffice the world’s increasing demand of
fresh water considering the high percentage of saline water on
earth. Generally, desalination processes can be divided into two
categories: (1) thermal process which involves the phase change of
water and (2) membrane process which does not involve the phase
change of water. During the last decade, the trend of desalination
has gradually shifted from the thermal to the membrane process
owing to high fluctuations in oil prices as well as reduced
membrane costs and increased membrane performance