One of the biggest challenges for commercialization of novel ideas, even if the Intellectual Property is duly protected, is the gap between laboratory processes, results and testing, and the full scale final product.  Key risks include scale-up of component materials and equipment, systems level thinking, testing at pilot scale in an actual application setting, and final implementation.  

Singapore’s Membrane Consortium, SG MEM, was set up to enable partnerships and collaborations towards developing Platform Solutions across our Membrane Ecosystem.  It brings together early stage research from our universities, Singapore’s unique translational facilities, and industry partners from upstream (materials companies), to membrane manufacturers, solution providers and end-users of separations technologies. This expanding and varied group of companies ranges from start-ups to SMEs, large local enterprises to multinationals.
One of the key institutional members of this ecosystem is the Separation Technologies Applied Research and Translation (START) Centre, Singapore’s national facility for bridging the gap between promising innovations in separations, especially membrane based inventions, at the laboratory scale, and industrial scale products and processes.  Over the past three years, this centre has built up broad capabilities in membrane (both flat-sheet and hollow-fiber) fabrication at industrial scale, the design, construction and testing of elements and modules, and the design of pilot systems for testing in real-life scenarios.  

This talk will showcase two case studies in how we have built the framework to take early stage membrane inventions to commercially viable solutions for key challenges in the fields of Water and Environment.  One technology is focused on industrial waste-water treatment for re-use, including potential recovery of valuables from the waste stream, and the other is a unique low-energy solution for water softening, both with applications in multiple scenarios.