Perspectives on mining from sea and other alternative strategies for minerals and water recovery - the development of novel membrane operations

An important contribution to the realization of a sustainable industrial development can be given by membrane operations. They can contribute to redesign process engineering in the logic of process intensification. In particular, the results achieved with membrane-assisted crystallization and membrane-assisted condensation show as these innovative membrane operations can overcome the performance of traditional operations: in the case of MCr, the possibility to produce specific polymorphs of crystals; in the case of the condenser, the control of the concentration of condensable contaminants in the recovered liquid stream. These two innovative membrane operations can bring interesting results for “water recovery from sky” and “water and mineral extraction from the sea”.