Abstract
Nowadays, reverse osmosis (RO) is the most largely utilized desalination process at the World level. During the three last decades, amazing progress has been realized in the manufacturing of RO membranes using different materials. However, what is astonishing here is the fact that a new research field was open in a relatively short time with hundreds of scientific publications and patents which are made on membrane post-synthesis modifications in order to improve the structural properties and desalination performance opening a large debate about the membrane fabrication techniques and membranes capacities to deal with various water pollutants. This review aims to discuss this extra technological field dedicated to membranes modifications following their fabrication. As conclusions, membrane fabrication methods are a well-established and developed technology which however needs more technical improvements to overcome the needs of a post-synthesis industry and satisfy quantitatively and qualitatively the water guidelines. On the other hand, the large chemical products use in both membranes synthesis and post-synthesis should be avoided or at least reduced, since monomers, alcohols, acids and bases risk to be realized into drinking water. That is said because RO process has been presented hopefully as a promising powerful and green technology instead of chlorination and coagulation/flocculation which are proven highly polluting with their toxic metal salts injection and poisonous disinfection by-products formation. (c) 2017 The Authors. Published by IASE. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).