S.S.Madaeni - Chemical Engineering department, Razi University , Kermanshah, Iran

Over the past decades, the industrialised nations have responded to environmental degradation in three successive steps: ignore, control and prevent. In this sequence each step can be considered as the “solution” to the problems that could not be solved with the strategy of the former stage . in the first strategy the wastes were disposed into the environment . the basis for the second strategy was management of pollutants after they were produced. The third strategy, which is called “cleaner production” , aims for pollution prevention coupled with economic advance. Cleaner production (CP) or pollution prevention (P2) is based on efficient use of raw material, energy and human resource, new of modified technology, recovery, recycle and ruse. The fundamental shift is from emphasizing waste management to concentrating efforts on minimizing the creation of pollutant and wastes. Cleaner production is a long – term, cost – effective and more sustainable approach to tackling environmental problems. Membrane processes in general and nanofilters in particular are promising technologies for pollution prevention. In this paper the application of membrane technology in cleaner production is demonstrated. The appropriate case studies are described to emphasis the applicability of this new strategy in the real world.

membrane , cleaner production , case studies