State-of-the-art developments in fabricating ceramic membranes with low energy consumption

Ceramic membranes are especially beneficial for treating industrial wastewater due to their satisfactory bending strength, high chemical resistance, and excellent thermal stability. However, the high fabrication cost has restricted their wide applications. Usually, sintering-energy consumption accounts for most of the costs of ceramic membranes, thus increasing the fabrication costs and limiting their application prospects. In this review, we discuss strategies to decrease energy consumption and give meaningful prospects for future work. Easily sintered materials, low sintering temperature, cold sintering process, no sintering process, rapid sintering process, and decrease sintering methods (i.e., co-sintering process and optimized membrane structure) are the main methods treated in this work. This review will provide an important reference for ceramic membranes regarding low energy consumption in the ceramic field.