MEMBRANES
Last month, Mann+Hummel (Ludwigsburg, Germany; www.mann-hummel.com) expanded its Life Sciences & Environment (LS&E) efforts by investing in ZwitterCo (Somerville, Mass.; www.zwitterco.com), an early-stage company developing membranes for handling waste streams heavily contaminated with organic materials. The investment, through Mann+Hummel Corporate Ventures, will boost commercialization efforts of this technology for wastewater-treatment applications. The strategic partnership between the two companies will be handled through Microdyn-Nadir US, Inc. (Goleta, Calif.; www.microdyn-nadir.com), operating as part of the LS&E group within the Membrane Solutions segment.
Earlier this year, ZwitterCo started a two-year, $1.25-million project funded under the of the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) Water Security Grand Challenge. That project aims to demonstrate ZwitterCo’s membrane technology for the pretreatment of produced water in the Permian Basin in southwestern U.S.
ZwitterCo’s membrane technology is based on zwitterionic copolymers that can reject key components from produced water while maintaining immunity to detrimental and irreversible membrane fouling. The membranes can remove nanoscale oils, greases, colloidal material, heavy metals and dissolved organic compounds without removing salts and dissolved solids. This makes filtration of highly saline waste streams practical and cost effective, according to DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (Morgantown, W.Va.; www.netl.doe.gov).