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

膜技术是水净化（包括海水和微咸水）和废水处理不可缺少的平台。然而，由于膜表面与有机物、无机物和微生物等污染物之间的非特异性相互作用而产生的膜污染严重影响了水的过滤效率。形成污垢层的重要初始步骤是由蛋白质、电解质、有机分子组成的调节膜的沉积。因此，能够防止调节膜初始沉积的技术具有抵抗生物污染的潜力。目前的涂层技术在对抗膜表面生物膜的形成和污染方面存在不足，并且由于改性步骤多，在适应性方面存在重大挑战。基于我们多年的防污研究，UBC团队最近开发了一种一步通用防污涂层技术，可以应用于任何基材而无需预处理。该平台涂层技术成本低，稳定性好，具有优异的防污和抗膜效果，适用于所有材料，通过简单的水基工艺（浸涂或流涂），非常适合膜改性。因此，本次市场评估的重点将集中在水处理膜的抗菌和防污涂层上，以更好地了解其市场关键特性，并评估我们的涂层技术的潜力。这将使我们能够确定一个滩头市场，以探索涂层平台的商业化。这项市场研究的目标是确定可寻址细分市场的规模，并清晰地描绘竞争格局和潜在客户/合作伙伴。

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.