Key global challenges around water scarcity and water quality are developing rapidly, driven by climate change, regulation and health awareness. Nevertheless, these challenges are today still being addressed with technologies that were developed decades ago, including combined ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) schemes.
With its direct nanofiltration membranes (dNF), NX Filtration now seeks to disrupt this market, offering strong advantages in terms of selectivity, footprint and sustainability. The hollow fiber dNF membranes can, in one single step, remove low molecular weight organics from polluted water, including micropollutants, color, antibiotics, PFAS, but also bacteria and viruses from water.
At the same time, they offer strong sustainability benefits in terms of low energy use and avoidance of pre-treatment chemicals. The low fouling and chlorine resistant characteristics have resulted in new and simple processes for the treatment of water, the reuse of wastewater and the production of potable water.
Key applications
Over the past years NX Filtration has developed commercial relationships based on dNF technology with a wide range of both municipal and industrial customers.
For its municipal customers, NX Filtration’s membranes are being applied to produce drinking water from surface water by removing, amongst others, micropollutants, bacteria, viruses and colour in one single step, to treat wastewater streams to prevent discharge of polluting substances in the environment and to reuse wastewater for purposes that also include the production of drinking water.
NX Filtration’s membranes are also serving various water consuming industries. Here they treat surface or well water to optimise quality and characteristics for process water, prevent discharge of polluting wastewater and reuse wastewater for industrial processes and recover and recycle valuable raw materials from wastewater streams, such as indigo in the textile industry or cleaning chemicals in beer breweries.
To demonstrate the performance of dNF, NX Filtration offers a range of pilot equipment, varying from automated containerized pilot systems to table-top units for proof of concept. The fully automated Mexpert pilot installation allows for maximum flexibility in all piloting circumstances. It uses the largest dNF modules for the most realistic full-scale testing results. Adapting running conditions, hydraulically cleaning the module, dosing cleaning agents, can all be controlled and monitored digitally. Datalogging allows for in depth analysis of the test results.
NX Filtration’s fully automated Mexpert pilot unit
