Opportunities and Challenges in Membrane Applications for the Treatment and Concentration of Highly Osmotic Solutions

Dear Colleagues,

In order to achieve sustainability, long-term viability and regulatory pressure, efforts towards a circular economy have become an absolute necessity in industry. Given the increasing rate of water scarcity worldwide, it is more important than ever to ensure rapid implementation of closed-loop water recycling through the development of innovative technical solutions and prompt availability. In the field of industrial water and wastewater management, advanced and economically feasible techniques for the treatment of highly concentrated solutions are of great interest, as this is what a minimal or even zero-liquid-discharge approach requires. However, along with the recovery and reuse of water, other valuable resources, e.g., organic substances, necessitate further research Following this premise, the application of innovative and energy-efficient membrane processes is a coherent and expedient approach.

We are pleased to invite you to submit your research paper or review article to the Special Issue “Opportunities and challenges in membrane applications for the treatment and concentration of highly osmotic solutions”.

This Special Issue aims to highlight the important role of membrane processes in attaining sustainable technical solutions that accelerate the realization of a circular economy in industry. In this regard, this issue hopes to emphasize innovative membrane processes and novel applications for membrane processes and the opportunities they present. It also aims to highlight the challenges involved and demonstrate their optimization potential as well as the need for further research and development.

We hereby specifically refer to the treatment of process solutions with osmotic pressures above the one of RO concentrate (> 60 bar).

The corresponding processes include:

• High-pressure reverse osmosis (HPRO) (feed pressures > 100 bar)l
• Low-salt-rejection RO (LSRRO);
• High-pressure nanofiltration (HPNF) (feed pressures up to 80 bar);
• Forward osmosis (FO);
• Osmotically assisted RO (OARO);
• Membrane distillation (MD).

Original research articles and reviews are welcome.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Christine Kleffner
Prof. Dr. Gerd Braun
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Membranes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• circular economy
• minimal liquid discharge (MLD)
• resource recovery
• high concentrations
• brine concentration
• water recycling