Anfiro develops advanced water desalination membrane

Anfiro, a water technology start-up, is developing new reverse osmosis membranes that can improve seawater desalination process.

The start-up is based on research innovations from Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame.

The new membranes are expected to offer better clean-up experience since it will be capable of separating all dissolved ions from water.

Anfiro’s membranes can resist damage caused by Chlorine which is commonly used as a water disinfectant, thus facilitating time, energy and cost savings.

Anfiro CEO Jaime Mateus said: "In a typical seawater desalination process, chlorine is added upstream of the reverse osmosis stage, then removed before passing through the membranes. Afterwards, a residual amount is reintroduced into the system.

"Anfiro’s polymer materials are not degraded by exposure to chlorine, which means chlorine can be used throughout the reverse osmosis stage, which reduces bio-fouling and can lead to a longer membrane lifespan."

The core technology innovated by the company is based on self-assembling polymer technology, a part of which has been licensed from the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.

Mateus said: "In a seawater reverse osmosis process, energy can represent 50 to 70 percent of the operational cost, so decreasing the operating pressure and energy use has a direct impact on the user’s bottom line.

"Because Anfiro’s membranes can attain a much higher permeability than current technology, they can be operated at a lower pressure while still delivering a sufficiently high flow rate."

The firm has proposed other variants of membranes as well including graphene, nanotubes and aquaporin-based membranes. However, those are not easy to produce on a mass scale and might not be cost competitive as compared to conventional manufacturing methods.

Mateus said: "This approach differentiates us from other proposed membrane innovations and significantly reduces our manufacturing risk."

"The high permeability of our membranes can allow for smaller and more capital-efficient reverse osmosis systems that require fewer membranes to process a given amount of water.

"We project we can decrease the total cost of seawater desalination by up to 35%, which in many places around the world would allow desalination to achieve cost parity with conventional freshwater sources.

"Our goal is to scale up our membrane manufacturing so we can develop full-scale reverse osmosis elements that are suitable for pilot testing with commercial partners.

"We are exploring several potential commercial partnerships and investment opportunities that can help us throughout this development phase."