1. Introduction Heavy metals present in the wastewaters discharged from industries are a subject of major concern for the environmental issues. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has assessed the hazards caused by the various heavy metals. Table 1 shows the discharge limits of various heavy metals, their potential health effects on humans along with their sources as per EPA [1]. When these metal ions present at excessive levels in an aqueous discharge, the stream remains unusable due to the adverse effects associated with consumption [2]. These metal ions are highly toxic and if they are directly discharged can cause environmental imbalance and can damage the subsequent treatments associated in the wastewater purifcation plants. Therefore, inexpensive and effcient methods of wastewater purifcation or improvements in the existing methods will have to be made to adjust the new requirements [3]. The classical methods such as adsorption, ion exchange, chemical precipitation and evaporation have been used for the removal of metal ions from aqueous effuents [4-6]. But these methods are not capable of reducing toxic level of the metals considerably. Membrane separation technique is found as an easily achievable and better technique for the separation of toxic metals from wastewater which is used frequently for the separation process [7]. Several membrane based separation techniques including nanofltration and reverse osmosis have been developed to remove undesired constituents from aqueous streams [8-10]. These processes are carried out in homogeneous solution. The usual processes such as reverse osmosis, nanofltration seems to be highly expensive due the requirement of higher pressures and high membrane cost. Micellar enhanced ultrafltration (MEUF) can be considered as a good alternative to remove heavy metals from wastewater using micelle. It was frst introduced by Scamehorn for the removal of both dissolved organic compounds and heavy metal ions from waste stream [3,7,11]. Number of investigations has been carried out for the removal of metal ions from wastewater using MEUF technique. The present paper attempts to review those investigations. The infuence of various parameters such Central European Journal of Chemistry * E-mail: bag@ched.svnit.ac.in ** E-mail: amungray@yahoo.com Department of Chemical Engineering, Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat 395007, India Alka A. Mungray * , Shrirang V. Kulkarni, Arvind K. Mungray ** Removal of heavy metals from wastewater using micellar enhanced ultrafltration technique: a review Review Article Abstract: © Versita Sp. z o.o. Received 2 July 2011; Accepted 19 October 2011 Keywords: Heavy metal ions • Micellar enhanced ultrafltration • Removal • Operating parameters • Rejection Application of Micellar enhanced ultrafltration (MEUF) for the removal of different heavy metals has been reviewed. It is considered an economical alternative available to the conventional membrane separation process, because it reduces the requirement of higher pressure and high membrane costs. MEUF is a separation processes which uses surfactants and ultrafltration membranes to remove multivalent ions from wastewater with high percent rejection using electrostatic attraction between metals and micelles. This review seeks to defne the effect of the operating parameters, i.e., applied pressure, surfactant concentration, feed temperature, metal ion concentration, feed fow rate, operating time etc. on the removal of metal ions. Emphasis is given to the application of MEUF for the removal of single metal ions, multiple metal ions and different metals along with other organic materials. Also, this review focuses on studies related to micelle formation, attraction between metal ions and micelles, and recovery of surfactants for future research. Cent. Eur. J. Chem. • 10(1) • 2012 • 27-46 DOI: 10.2478/s11532-011-0134-3 27