Membrane technology has grown in recent years due to its outstanding alignment with sustainable development and process intensification. Moreover, it offers concrete benefits in the production processes, such as significant reduction of equipment size, boosting efficiency, energy savings, reducing capital costs, minimizing environmental
impact, increasing safety, and using remote control and automation [18]. Membrane operations are already recognized worldwide as powerful tools to solve some important global problems and develop new industrial processes needed for a sustainable industrial growth. In seawater desalination, membrane operations or their combination in integrated
systems are already a successful approach to solve freshwater demand at lower costs and minimum environmental impact. The membrane bioreactor (MBR) appears today to be the best available technology (BAT) for the purification and reuse of municipal wastewater.
Therefore, membrane technology provides opportunities for water production for agricultural purposes at levels acceptable for farmers as well as for the environment.
The first thermal desalination plants were more energy efficient and compact with respect to those utilizing reverse osmosis (RO) technology. A break through was the development of the asymmetric cellulose acetate membrane in the 1960s [19]. Further improvements in membranes and processes have made RO currently the most widespread and utilized technology for desalination around the world, at around 60% of the total
installed capacity [20].With the development of reverse osmosis, several other membrane techniques were investigated as standalone units for desalination or integrated with RO. Larger and more efficient plants were and are being developed to meet the increasing water demands. For instance the largest installed RO desalination plant is supplying Israel with 540,000 m3 of potable water per day [21]. Moreover, projects with the aim of reaching desalination capacities of one megaton per day are