Ultrafiltration membranes for wastewater and water process engineering: A comprehensive statistical review over the past decade

[Display omitted] •Fouling, modelling and wastewater treatment are dominating research areas for UF membranes which accounted for 27 %, 17 %, and 12 % of the total publication output, respectively.•Journal of Membrane Science was the primary journal dominating the size of the annual publication output on UF.•Fouling of the UF membrane is the largest single area of research interest.•Potential research trends in UF membrane applications are critically reviewed.•Optimization and Hybrid UF membrane processes are receiving a consistent research interest. The primary intention of this review is to showcase and quantify the level of research interest and current research trends concerning UF membrane applications and processes within the past decade (2009–2018). Detected statistics revealed a resurgent interest in the UF technology on a yearly basis. "Journal of Membrane Science" and "Desalination and Water Treatment" were the primary journals dominating the size of the annual publication output among more than 120 journals, with 854 and 683 papers, respectively. Based on the ScienceDirect research platform, fouling (27 %), modelling (17 %) and wastewater (12 %) were the dominant research topics and accounted for more than half of the total scientific articles published (4547 articles) within the specified period of the research. Unsurprisingly, topics like UF membrane fabrication and modification, food processing, and hybrid membrane process have revealed a growing trend in terms of annual publications. The current review revealed the present-day significance of UF membranes along with their prospective opportunities for attaining sustainability in water industries and materializing the efforts of future researchers in the right direction.