Clean water supply has become one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century; therefore, water source protection is of increasing importance. Beyond environmental protection reasons, economic concerns—derived from increasing costs of processing water and wastewater discharge—also prompt industries to use advanced wastewater treatment methods, which ensure higher purification efficiency or even the recycling of water. Therefore, highly effective treatment of oily wastewaters has become an urgent necessity because they are produced in high quantities and have harmful effects on both the environment and human population. However, high purification efficiency can be difficult to achieve, because some compounds are hard to eliminate. Conventional methods are effective for the removal of floating and dispersed oil, but for finely dispersed, emulsified and dissolved oil advanced methods must be used, such as membrane filtration which exhibits several advantages. The application of this technology is restricted by fouling—the major limiting factor—which jeopardizes the membrane performance. In order to reduce fouling, in‐depth research is being conducted to make the treatment of oil‐contaminated water technically and economically feasible. The present work aims to review the conventional oil separation methods with their limitations and to focus on membrane filtration, which ensures significantly higher purification efficiencies, including the main problem: the flux reduction caused by fouling. This paper also discusses promising solutions, such as membrane modification methods, mostly with hydrophilic and/or photocatalytic nanoparticles and nanocomposites, overviewing the efforts that are being made to develop feasible technologies to treat oil‐contaminated waters.

中文翻译：

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光催化膜过滤及其在含油废水处理中优于常规方法的优势：综述

清洁水供应已成为21世纪的最大挑战之一；因此，水源保护越来越重要。除了环境保护原因之外，由于处理水和废水排放成本的增加而引起的经济问题也促使工业界使用先进的废水处理方法，以确保更高的净化效率甚至水的循环利用。因此，对含油废水进行高效处理已成为当务之急，因为它们大量产生并对环境和人口均产生有害影响。然而，由于某些化合物难以消除，因此难以实现高纯化效率。常规方法可有效去除浮油和分散油，但对于细分散，必须使用乳化和溶解油的高级方法，例如膜过滤，它具有多种优点。该技术的应用受到结垢的限制，结垢是主要的限制因素，会损害膜的性能。为了减少结垢，正在进行深入的研究以使处理被油污染的水在技术上和经济上都是可行的。本工作旨在回顾常规油分离方法的局限性，并着重于膜过滤，以确保明显更高的净化效率，包括主要问题：由于结垢而导致的通量降低。本文还讨论了很有前途的解决方案，例如膜修饰方法，主要是使用亲水和/或光催化纳米颗粒和纳米复合材料，