**Membrane Applications**

**Chapter 10**

**Provisional chapter**

**Research Trend of Membranes for Water Treatment by**

Since the beginning of water shortage by disasters such as global warming, environmental pollution, and drought, development of original technology and studies have been undertaken to increase the availability of water resources. Among the technologies, water treatment technology using membranes has a better water quality improvement than existing physicochemical and biological processes. Moreover, it is environmentalfriendly technology that does not use chemicals. Water treatment membranes are applied to various fields such as wastewater treatment, water purification, seawater desalination, ion exchange process, ultra-pure water production, and separation of organic solvents. Furthermore, water treatment technologies using membranes will increasingly expand. The core technology of the water treatment membrane is to control the size of pores for membrane performance and is being researched to improve performance. In this chapter, the frequencies of presentation are filed by country, institution, and company through technology competitiveness and evaluation of patents and papers. In addition, evaluation of technologies for wastewater treatment, water purification, seawater desalination, and ion exchange process was carried out in the same way as before. Finally, future

**Research Trend of Membranes for Water Treatment by** 

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.76694

**Analysis of Patents and Papers' Publications**

research directions were suggested by using evaluation results.

**Keywords:** patents, water treatment, desalination, ion exchange, membrane

The world is now expected to become water scarce as a result of global warming, and by 2025, it is estimated that water-scarce countries will increase by more than 30% compared to 1995 [1]. The twentieth century was the era of black gold, represented by oil, but the age of water, or blue gold, is expected to emerge in the twenty-first century. Due to the global problems

**Analysis of Patents and Papers' Publications**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76694

Chang Hwa Woo

Chang Hwa Woo

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

#### **Research Trend of Membranes for Water Treatment by Analysis of Patents and Papers' Publications Research Trend of Membranes for Water Treatment by Analysis of Patents and Papers' Publications**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.76694

#### Chang Hwa Woo Chang Hwa Woo

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76694

#### **Abstract**

Since the beginning of water shortage by disasters such as global warming, environmental pollution, and drought, development of original technology and studies have been undertaken to increase the availability of water resources. Among the technologies, water treatment technology using membranes has a better water quality improvement than existing physicochemical and biological processes. Moreover, it is environmentalfriendly technology that does not use chemicals. Water treatment membranes are applied to various fields such as wastewater treatment, water purification, seawater desalination, ion exchange process, ultra-pure water production, and separation of organic solvents. Furthermore, water treatment technologies using membranes will increasingly expand. The core technology of the water treatment membrane is to control the size of pores for membrane performance and is being researched to improve performance. In this chapter, the frequencies of presentation are filed by country, institution, and company through technology competitiveness and evaluation of patents and papers. In addition, evaluation of technologies for wastewater treatment, water purification, seawater desalination, and ion exchange process was carried out in the same way as before. Finally, future research directions were suggested by using evaluation results.

**Keywords:** patents, water treatment, desalination, ion exchange, membrane
