Nanocellulose in membrane technology for water purification

This chapter specifically describes the advanced applications of NC (nanocellulose)-based membranes in tackling water impurities. NC possesses many unique features including high surface area, tunable porosity, immense functionality, flexibility, transparency, and excellent compatibility with the other organic and inorganic molecules. The focus of this chapter is to compile all the studies focused on NC-based membranes derived from cellulose nanofibers (CNF), cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), and bacterial nanocellulose (BNC). This chapter also involves their implication as microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF), reverse osmosis (RO), forward osmosis (FO), and membrane distillation (MD) to tackle a variety of impurities such as biological (e.g., viruses, bacteriophages, antifouling agents), organic dyes, oil/water, solvent/water mixture, metal ions, and salts. In brief, the properties of NC membrane, their separation performance coupling with the competency of flux, and their structural–physical properties are also covered in this chapter.