抄録
The water shortage and pollution have been in serious situation in the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and willbe more serious in USA, China and EU in the near future. In order to solve such water problems, rseverse osmosis(RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes have been developed and applied for the production of safe water. ROmembranes were developed in 1960’sfor seawater desalination, and improved for the higher performance and thelower cost, which realized large number of RO desalination plants to produce drinking water such as in the MiddleEast, Caribbean Islands, and the Mediterranean. In addition, the new RO membranes with low fouling propertieswere developed recently, and have been applied to the wastewater reclamation plants. On the other hand, NF mem-branes have been used for softening the hard water and for removing the toxic materialssuch as organic solvent andagricultural chemicals in the environment. The RO and NF membranes are expected to improve for the higher per-formance such as selectivity, water permeability and durability, which enables the lower cost water treatment, and itwill be achieved by the advanced polymer science and processing technologies.
