The US Patent Office (USPTO) has granted Singapore-based environmental health service Memsift Innovations to cover the formulation and the method of making stomate membrane and its various applications.
Stomate is a highly hydrophobic hollow fibre membrane with unique surface chemistry for vapour permeation.
For efficient thermal membrane separation and membrane distillation (MD) processes, the membrane should ideally exhibit optimum characteristics in terms of membrane thickness, porosity, pore size, chemical and thermal stability, membrane surface chemistry (hydrophobicity) and high liquid entry pressure (LEP).
Memsift Innovations has developed a highly hydrophobic 2D material and hollow fibre membrane stomate with unique surface chemistry and enhanced performance for MD application.
The technology was demonstrated with the TS-30 improved MD system for industrial liquid-waste treatment and resource recovery focusing on pharmaceutical, chemical, pulp and paper, metal finishing and mining industries.
It helped close the industrial liquid-waste loop and recovered up to 100% chemicals (metal salts, acids and other chemical compounds) and about 80% of water, lowering operating cost compared to traditional evaporators. The technology also reduced the overall carbon footprint.
Dr J Antony Prince, CEO of Memsift Innovations said, “The patent further strengthens our commercialisation efforts and differentiate our improved MD system against the traditional MD methods and provides Memsift Innovations a sustainable competitive advantage in the market.”
