Municipal Ultrafiltration Heads Towards Commoditization

Market entry of Toray and Dow signal reign of 'Big Three' may be over!

The municipal market for ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF) membranes has long been dominated by what the industry terms the ‘Big Three’; Siemens (previously US Filter), GE (previously Zenon) and Pall. Other players such as Koch and Aquasource, who made some early inroads into the North American market, have largely fallen by the wayside as inside-out PES UF/MF membranes have lost favor for various reasons. This has left the Big Three (B3) to divide up the North American UF/MF market, with other manufacturers rarely qualified to bid for these projects.

The dilemma for consultants and owners who want to purchase a UF/MF system is that the proprietary systems offered by the B3 each have their own unique characteristics. Therefore to create a competitive bid situation, at least two of the B3 need to be trialed to specify design parameters, unlike commoditized reverse osmosis (RO) membranes that can be bid on by a number of manufacturers after a single pilot study.

Finally, as Bob Dylan sang, The times they are a-changin’. The introduction of outside-in, PVDF UF modules to the market in the past few years by RO Membrane behemoths Dow and Toray has allowed OEMs, which have had a long relationship with these companies in the RO market, to now enter the UF market….and the timing could not have been better! I have been told by the larger engineering consulting firms that 5 years ago they would not have considered a UF OEM that did not have years of operating data from systems of comparable size to the project they were working on; that pretty much ruled out all but the B3. For various reasons including the consolidation of some of the B3 into larger more bureaucratic corporations, rising prices especially for smaller systems and some questions over long term membrane integrity for the submerged systems, many consultants are now willing to overlook previous experience requirements.

While the Dow and Toray UF modules are not interchangeable like their RO modules due to different positions of the feed and permeate ports (see Figure 1), availability is not restricted exclusively to a single OEM which allows more than one OEM to bid for a project using the same modules. This is the beginning of a huge change to the MF/UF market place, making bidding much more competitive and potentially allowing owners to conduct one pilot trial but still have multiple bidders as is the case for RO systems. This will be a relief to consultants and owners who in the past have had to endure expensive and lengthy pilot test programs to overcome the difficulty in comparing the proprietary MF/UF offerings.

Figure 1: Comparison of Toray and Dow UF Modules

Within a year of the Toray UF module receiving California Department of Public Health approval, several bids have been awarded to OEMs using this membrane and the first North American installation, a 2.0 MGD system built by Wigen Water Technologies, was started up in North Dakota earlier this year. This is the first of three UF systems between 1.0 and 4.5 MGD using the Toray module that Wigen is starting up in 2011. Wigen also has a 2.0 MGD system using the Dow module scheduled to start up in South Dakota in early 2012. At least two other OEMs have been awarded projects using these modules that are scheduled to start up in 2011.

So the times really are a-changin’ and the Big Three’s stranglehold on the MF/UF market is starting to weaken with the availability of quality PVDF outside-in UF modules to OEMs that are familiar with competing in the commoditized RO system market. While we are still not at the point of interchangeable UF modules from multiple manufacturers, the availability of the same UF modules to multiple OEMs will make the market much more competitive resulting in reduced costs for end users.