Functional catalytic membrane development: A review of catalyst coating techniques

Catalytic membranes combine catalytic activity with conventional filtration membranes, thus enabling diverse attractive benefits into the conventional membrane filtration processes, such as easy catalyst reuse, antifouling, anti-microbial, and enhancing process efficiency. Up to date, tremendous progresses have been made on functional catalytic membrane preparation and applications, which significantly advances the competitiveness of membrane technologies in process industries. The present article provides a critical and holistic overview of the current state of knowledge on existing catalyst coating techniques for functional catalytic membrane development. Based on coating mechanisms, the techniques are generally categorized into physical and chemical surface coating routes. For each technique, we first introduce fundamental principle, followed by a critical discussion of their applications with representative case studies. Advantages and drawbacks are also emphasized for different surface coating technologies. Finally, future perspectives are highlighted to provide deep insights into their future developments.