Novel antifouling and antibiofilm coating technologies for membrane applications: A market research study

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Membrane technology is an indispensable platform for water purification, including seawater and brackish water, and for wastewater treatment. However, membrane fouling, which arises from the nonspecific interaction between membrane surface and foulants including organic, inorganic matter and microorganisms significantly compromise the efficiency of water filtration. An important initial step in the formation of fouling layer the deposition of a conditioning film consists of proteins, electrolytes, organic molecules. Thus, technologies that can prevent initial deposition of conditioning film have the potential to resist the biofouling. Current coating technologies for combating biofilm formation and fouling on membrane surface are inadequate, and has significant challenges in adaption due to multiple modification steps. Building on our many years of antifouling research, the UBC team has recently developed a one-step universal antifouling coating technology which can be applied to any substrate without pre-treatment. This platform coating technology is low cost, stable, show excellent antifouling and antibiofilm efficacy, and applicable to all materials via a simple water-based process (dip or flow coating) make them highly suitable for membrane modification. Accordingly, the focus of this market assessment will focus on the antimicrobial and antifouling coatings for water treatment membranes to better understand their market-critical characteristics and to evaluate the potential for our coating technology. This would allow us to identify a beachhead market to explore the commercialization of the coating platform. The goals of this market research are to establish the size of addressable market segments and to present a clear portrait of the competitive landscape and of potential customers/partners.