Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], February 22 (ANI/BusinessWire India): UK technology business Evove has granted Indian membrane system supplier Aquabrane a licence to deploy anti-fouling graphene-oxide coatings to purify difficult wastewaters full of hydrocarbons that conventional membranes struggle to deal with.
During the course of the week of January 30, Evove’s technical services manager, Mark Parker (photo), trained the Aquabrane team in Mumbai on how to apply a specialised coating to their membrane substrate that prevents the serious problem of fouling. Without it, membranes are fouled with the suspended hydrocarbons in produced water, causing higher energy consumption and a greater necessity to clean-in-place.
To make the technology widely available to southern Asian oil and gas producers, Aquabrane has taken a licence from Evove to supply enhanced membranes into the oil and gas sector. With it, far greater amounts of polluted wastewaters can be purified at lower expense to make them suitable for water reuse or discharge into the environment.
“We established the performance of the enhanced membranes in industrial trials over many months in close partnership with the Evove team in the UK. The results confirmed the successful integration of Evove’s Enhance coating and we are delighted to have a powerful tool to help oil and gas producers meet their ESG goals in regard to water and decarbonisation,” stated Sumeet Mehra, CEO of Aquabrane. “Thanks to the technology transfer and licence, these very durable hollow fibre membranes are immediately available for deployment from our manufacturing facility in Mumbai,” he declared.
The coating has the effect of maintaining peak membrane flux, as well as simplifying and reducing the frequency of cleaning. This allows low-energy purification of these wastewaters, reduced chemical use and less frequent membrane replacement.
“The project is a milestone in the membrane market, as it has turned 5 years of fundamental R&D in advanced materials science and the application of graphene in water filtration into a highly impactful product,” commented Tom Pugh, VP of Customer Success at Evove (who has directed the project from early product development through the partnership with Aquabrane). Evove CEO Chris Wyres added, “Being able to handle some of the most difficult oily waters is game changing for numerous industries. Aquabrane have been quick to adopt this innovative coating product and we look forward to seeing their membranes hard at work in the numerous customer sites identified for the first phase of product roll-out.”
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