Construction strategies of self-cleaning ceramic composite membranes for water treatment

Ceramic membranes have received much popularity due to their high mechanical strength, satisfactory acid/alkali resistance, and long-term stability. However, ceramic membranes are also inevitably fouled by contaminates during the membrane separation process. Therefore, construction strategies of anti-fouling ceramic membranes are a main topic in current research. In this work, we review a better anti-fouling ceramic membrane, which is named “self-cleaning” membrane and membrane process. Date to now, there are four main strategies to construct self-cleaning ceramic membranes: 1) porous piezoelectric ceramic membranes; 2) photo-catalytic ceramic membrane; 3) electrochemical ceramic membranes and 4) self-cleaning ceramic membrane surface. Self-cleaning ceramic membranes can in-situ remove and decompose the pollutants on the membrane surface and recover the water permeance that exhibits a great potential to treat industrial wastewater without backwashing or other methods. The detailed membrane fabrication period, mechanism and important case studies are reported in this review. Self-cleaning ceramic membrane is expected to be next-generation anti-fouling ceramic membrane material for continuous water treatment. It is a first review work that systematically concluded all the strategies for self-cleaning ceramic membranes that can be an important reference in ceramic or membrane fields.