(MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China)
Membrane technology has been widely applied in the solution of some great issues that humans are facing in water resource, energy resource, environment, and heath etc. Polymer membranes play a key role in membrane separation processes, in which high efficiency separation with low energy consumption is desirable. Traditional polymer membranes are often subject to some challenges such as wide pore size distribution, low permeability, membrane fouling. To address these problems, in the past decades, many efforts have been made on the preparation and structure control of polymer membranes. The objective of these work is to achieve the high performance and multifunctionalization for membrane materials from the design and control of membrame microstructure. By the optimization of pore size distribution, hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity and charge characteristic etc., we have developed a series of novel membrane materials with enhanced permeability, separation accuracy and antifouling ability. In this paper, recent research progresses on the preparation and modification of polymer membranes used in water treatment are reviewed. The development and study prospective of water treatment membranes are proposed. This review may be helpful for researchers whose interests focus on polymer membranes for water treatment.