Membrane distillation (MD) is an emerging technology which attracted a lot of interest in the last years but did not commercialise on large scale until today. A significant increase of research activities is visible due to rising number of publications and conference shares and a few companies already focus their business on this technology. A number of pilot units are already in field operation.

The intention of the seminar is to provide a compre-hensive overview on MD from theoretical background to practical applications and to bring together re-searchers, MD system and component producers and companies who are potential applicants for MD tech-nology.

The seminar will provide details on the physics behind MD and show the advantages and limitations of the process. Possibilities for process optimization will be shown as well as the impact of membrane parameters. Practical results from the lab and from the field will be provided and potential applications for industrial use of MD will be discussed.

Membranes in Water Processing incl. Zero Liquid Discharge

Since the first RO plant has been erected the development of membranes has continuously proceeded further. The quality of membranes has been improved and the membrane technology diversified. Nowadays Micro-, Nano-, Ultrafiltration and Reverse Osmosis are as common and Mem-brane Distillation is on its way to fill the gab of thermal and membrane processes.

Material flow treatment and the production of raw material out of sea- or brackish water can be implemented by means of membranes as well as by ZLD.

During the desalination process, seawater will be concentrated as long as there is salty mud left only. Briefly speaking: ZLD helps to protect the environment and to save resources and costs. And beside of this crude materials may be pro-duced!