A new commercial biomimetic hollow fiber membrane for forward osmosis

Hollow fiber membranes have shown great promise as a platform for osmotic processes such as forward osmosis (FO) and pressure retarded osmosis (PRO). Numerous hollow fiber FO membranes have been designed by academic researchers around the world. However, few of these designs have made it to full scale production. In this study, we report on the newly launched Aquaporin Inside™ hollow fiber FO membrane from Aquaporin A/S, Denmark. These membranes were tested in miniature modules under various osmotic testing conditions. With incorporating biomimetic aquaporin proteins as “water channel” in the selective layer, these membranes exhibited excellent FO performance with water flux of 21 LMH, reverse salt flux of 3.6 gMH and specific reverse salt flux of 0.18 g/L in PRO mode with 1 M NaCl and deionized water as draw and feed solutions, respectively. The structure parameter was determined to be 210.5 ± 55.5 μm, which is one of the lowest S values reported for thin film composite hollow fiber membranes.