MINI REVIEW article
Front. Chem. Eng.
Sec. Materials Process Engineering
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fceng.2025.1695014
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvanced Nanomaterials-Based Membranes for Liquid ApplicationsView all articles
Challenges and Solutions for Nanofiltration Membranes in Water Treatment
Provisionally accepted
- College of Material Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang, China
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Nanofiltration (NF) membranes are a pressure-driven membrane separation technology that lies between reverse osmosis (RO) and ultrafiltration (UF), featuring selective separation of low-molecular-weight organic compounds, divalent ions, and some monovalent ions. Due to their low operating pressure, low energy consumption, and ability to efficiently desalinate while retaining some beneficial minerals, NF membranes have shown broad application prospects in drinking water purification, wastewater treatment, food and pharmaceutical industries, and resource recovery. This article systematically reviews the existing challenges (including trade-off effect between selectivity and flux, membrane fouling and insufficient chemical stability) and the corresponding countermeasures from the perspectives of material modification and structural design, etc., with the aim of providing references for further research and industrial application of NF membranes.
Keywords: Nanofiltration, Water treatment, Trade-off effect, Membrane fouling, Chemical stability
Received: 29 Aug 2025; Accepted: 12 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Su, Zhang, Liu, Wang and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tiantian Li, litiantian669@163.com
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