Cellulose Acetate Membranes: Fouling Types and Antifouling Strategies—A Brief Review

Cellulose acetate (CA) is a semisynthetic, biodegradable polymer. Due to its characteristics, CA has several applications, including water membranes, filament-forming matrices, biomedical nanocomposites, household tools, and photographic films. This review deals with topics related to the CA membranes, which are prepared using different techniques, such as the phase inversion technique. CA membranes are considered very important since they can be used as microfiltration membranes (MF), ultrafiltration membranes (UF), nanofiltration membranes (NF), reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, and forward osmosis (FO) membranes. Membrane fouling results from the accumulation of materials that the membrane rejects on the surface or in the membrane’s pores, lowering the membrane’s flux and rejection rates. There are various forms of CA membrane fouling, for instance, organic, inorganic, particulate fouling, and biofouling. In this review, strategies used for CA membrane antifouling are discussed and summarized into four main techniques: feed solution pretreatment, cleaning of the membrane surface, membrane surface modification, which can be applied using either nanoparticles, polymer reactions, surface grafting, or surface topography, and surface coating.