One of the problems that most afflicts humanity is the lack of clean water. Water stress, which is the pressure on the quantity and quality of water resources, exists in many places throughout the World. Desalination represents a valid solution to the scarcity of fresh water and several technologies are already well applied and successful (such as reverse osmosis), producing about 100 million m³·d⁻¹ of fresh water. Further advances in the field of desalination can be provided by innovative processes such as membrane distillation. The latter is of particular interest for the treatment of waste currents from conventional desalination processes (for example the retentate of reverse osmosis) as it allows to desalt highly concentrated currents as it is not limited by concentration polarization phenomena. New perspectives have enhanced research activities and allowed a deeper understanding of mass and heat transport phenomena, membrane wetting, polarization phenomena and have encouraged the use of materials particularly suitable for membrane distillation applications. This work summarizes recent developments in the field of membrane distillation, studies for module length optimization, commercial membrane modules developed, recent patents and advancement of membrane material.

最困扰人类的问题之一是缺乏干净的水。水资源压力是对水资源数量和质量的压力，存在于世界各地的许多地方。海水淡化是解决淡水稀缺问题的有效方法，并且多项技术已经得到很好的应用和成功（例如反渗透），产量约为 1 亿 m ³ ·d ^-1的淡水。膜蒸馏等创新工艺可以提供海水淡化领域的进一步进展。后者对于处理来自常规脱盐过程（例如反渗透的渗余物）的废流特别感兴趣，因为它允许对高度集中的流进行脱盐，因为它不受浓差极化现象的限制。新的视角增强了研究活动，并允许更深入地了解质量和热传输现象、膜润湿、极化现象，并鼓励使用特别适合膜蒸馏应用的材料。这项工作总结了膜蒸馏领域的最新发展、模块长度优化的研究、开发的商业膜模块、