Environmental sustainability of FO membrane separation applications – Bibliometric analysis and state-of-the-art review

Water treatment, product concentration, and resource recovery are few examples of the many areas where the economic promise of osmotic driven membrane separation remains unrealized. The most futuristic and sustainable, osmotic driven membrane separation process which works with-out any external hydraulic energy is forward osmosis (FO) process. This study comprises two parts first is of bibliometric analysis which helps to identify and analyze the current research trend in osmotic membrane filtration technique, and are represented along with nodal network visualization. Desalination and wastewater treatment seem to be the major application of FO technology followed by fertigation, algal dewatering, pharmaceutical and textile industries. The second part is the literature review on major applications of forward osmotic technique shortlisted from bibliometric analysis, which includes recent developments in FO research. An application based critical analysis on thin film nano composite membrane, draw solutes, nano particles for membrane modifications and hybrid FO units were performed. Analysing literatures from 2005 to 2022, this study pinpoints potential applications, future prospects and existing challenges in Forward Osmosis (FO), for the successful implementation of scale-up. © 2023 The Authors