Because the membranes remove nearly all of these pathogens, very little chlorine or other disinfectant is required in order to achieve the levels of pathogen removal required by the United States Environmental Protection Association (USEPA). MF and UF membranes are also excellent pretreatment for medium-pressure (nanofiltration, NF) and high-pressure (reverse osmosis, RO) membranes, which remove most of the hardness and total dissolved solids (TDS), respectively.

• MF and UF membranes are a positive barrier to pathogens, provided the membranes have no integrity issues, as determined by routine indirect and direct integrity testing, such as turbidity measurement and pressure decay tests, respectively.
• MF and UF membranes typically use less filtrate for backwashing than conventional deep-bed media filters and, therefore, have a higher recovery. This means that membrane systems generate less wastewater.
• The filtration flux through MF and UF membranes is much more than for conventional deep-bed media filters, and membrane systems can fit much more filtration area in the same footprint. Therefore, MF and UF membrane systems take up much less space than media filters designed to treat the same flow.
• NF and RO membranes use much less chemical than lime-softening and ion-exchange systems, and require much less space.