Biomimetic membranes: Advancements and applications — A minireview

Membrane-based separation technologies have been emerging in wastewater treatment, especially desalination, in the past few decades at the cost of higher energy consumption despite having energy recovery methods embedded with the separation technology. So, membranes used in these separation technologies are modified to provide high rejection, high water permeability flux at the expense of lower energy requirements. Owing to these requirements, recent developments showed that biomimetic membranes mainly based on aquaporin (AQP) are arising in this field. This paper reviews information about the aquaporin membranes, their necessity, and comparison with conventional membranes, advantages and disadvantages, fabrication methods, and recent applications. The future of biomimetic membranes is also briefly discussed. The significance of the current review focuses mainly on bridging the gap between commercial membranes and biomimetic membranes and paving the path on the future of biomimetic membrane commercialization.