Water. Desalination + reuse
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/1056083
30 Far Site December 2018 Water.desalination+reuse Danish membrane company Aquaporin is developing a new membrane for brackish water reverse osmosis (RO). The project won a grant of DKK 10.5 million ($1.6 million) from the European Union (EU) in October 2017. Work on the new membrane has been ongoing during 2018, and next year further process develop- ment and technical scale-up are on the agenda. The project is called Aquaporin Inside Brackish Water Reverse Os- mosis (AMBROSIA). "In this project we are taking the form factor that we developed for reverse osmosis (RO) in the tap water market, and developing a similar product for brackish water. While the conditions and requirements are di' erent in brackish water, the bene" ts that our technology brings are very similar," explains Yunfeng Li, Aquaporin senior strategic not have reached this stage so quickly. Of course there are also new things we had to learn, and we gained new insights," Li explains. Proof of concept Aquaporin hit the target of 50 per cent higher — ux in labora- tory conditions. The company is now seeking alliances with commercial partners and poten- tial customers to continue de- veloping the technology under a broader set of conditions. "We achieved excellent results in the lab. We can say that the concept works and we are seeing the results we want. But of course there is work to be done in transferring that recipe, that process, into a large-scale machine. It's in the process development stage at the mo- ment," says Li. The company wants to work with custom- ers to develop solutions that respond to their challenges. "We recognise that brack- ish water is a very varied space with a lot of potential users and applications. We are applying a completely new technology, and want to discover if there are bene" ts we can bring in addi- alliance executive. The " rm is known for using aquaporin proteins to develop RO and forward osmosis mem- branes for applications includ- ing residential, commercial, industrial and desalination. "We have been looking at whether we can maintain the rejection rates that the industry requires for brackish water, and to see how much we can improve on — ux," says Li. The project targeted up to 50 per cent higher — ux on salt rejection compared to industry norms. "We have a lot of knowledge and experience gained through developing a low-pressure RO membrane for tap water. That's a " rst- generation product. We've been able to use the know-how we gained during that process in the brackish project. By doing so, we have been able to reach where we are in a short time. Without the learning that we gained from the RO membrane development process, we would tion to a simple — ux increase. We are looking always to " nd problems of customers that are not easily solved by how they do things today," Li says. One obvious " eld for further investigation is how the tech- nology can be applied to " lter- ing contaminants other that salt. "There may be applications that solve critical issues," Li adds. The company styles itself as a membrane technology provider and supplier to the market, and not a systems integrator. Instead, it wants to work with systems specialists to develop ways to apply the new technology. "We are a global membrane technology provider that devel- ops the technology, produces the membranes, and supplies to the market. But we don't want to be a me-too supplier. Conven- tional membranes have been around for 30 or 40 years - and we think there are still a lot of unsolved problems out there in the marketplace," Li says. "We're saying that with the addition of biotechnology, we Aquaporin applies its tech to BWRO We are still at an early stage of what we think we can do with our technology. Yunfeng Li, Aquaporin senior strategic alliance executive (l to r) Darren Sun, Nano Sun co-founder and associate professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, engineer Zhang Lilin, and Wong Ann Chai, Nano Sun co-founder and managing director, inspect a completed membrane module. Singaporean start-up Nano Sun opened a 3D printer for mem- branes in July 2018. The process 3D prints millions of nanofi bres layered on top of each other and compressed into a membrane. "The result is a membrane with a faster fl ow rate than a conven- tional membrane, despite having a similar pollutant rejection rate," says Darren Sun, Nano Sun co- founder and associate professor at Nanyang Technological Univer- sity, Singapore. The fi rst customers of the new product are two large semi-con- ductor makers in Singapore, and a Chinese municipal wastewater treatment plant. The company's annual revenues are expected to hit $7.3 million in 2018. Sun has been developing the technology for 20 years. Nano Sun is a spin-off from NTU Singapore. 50% higher fl ux 3D print membrane is here