Metal organic frameworks embedded polymeric membranes: A comprehensive review on application in water purification and seawater desalination

The worldwide water demand has increased significantly, owing to overpopulation and extensive economic growth. Although global scientific community has addressed the water purification/desalination challenges using membrane filtration techniques, however, their applications are limited due to trade-off between selectivity and permeability. Therefore, new membrane materials with excellent filtration performance are required. Lately, metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have been identified as potentially beneficial membrane materials due to their unique features. While the literature has reported the latest investigations regarding the applications of MOFs based membranes for water purification/desalination, herein, a comprehensive review of MOFs integrated polymeric membranes has been presented. This review elaborates the historical timeline of MOFs based membranes with deep insights into fabrication approaches for MOFs induced polymeric membranes followed by their key features for water purification/desalination. Furthermore, the latest findings of these membranes regarding water treatment/desalination have been presented focusing on the removal of heavy metals, antimicrobial activity, desalination, antifouling behavior, and synergetic catalytic/separation capability. Lastly, the challenges in developing such membranes for practical applications have been highlighted besides future perspectives. The overall theme of this review is to provide a deep evaluation on present research, constraints, and future directions regarding MOFs induced polymeric membranes for the water treatment/desalination.