Idea for Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plant
Industrial wastewater is one of the major pollutants of water bodies globally. To effectively treat this water, Professor Neal Chung at the National University of Singapore has invented a novel water treatment system that uses a new type of hollow-fibre membrane. Traditional membranes resembled a straw and had a single hollow-core, the new tri-bore hollow-fibre membrane has three hollow cores offering a 30% higher water flow rate.
The membranes are being used by Separation Technologies Applied Research and Translation (START) Centre of Singapore and Memsift Innovations Pvt. Ltd. to jointly build a pilot wastewater treatment plant at a semiconductor company. The plant can treat up to 50,000 litre's of water per day and is anticipated to help the firm save up to 1.6 million litre's of water per year.
The new water system can filter over 90 percent of waste water into clean water and accumulate the metal waste into a liquid that can be sold or reused. This new method of waste water disposal uses only 20% of the current energy cost water treatment companies. If the pilots are successful, Memsift will obtain a full license and commercialize it with its other proprietary solutions.
