The benefits of Grafted Ceramic Membranes
Bart Coen,
A-membranes, Spin-off of VITO
Bio:
Passionate about new technologies and business development, Bart founded A-membranes end of 2021. He is thrilled to lead the A-membranes’ team in reducing the impact of product separations on climate change. Prior to starting A-membranes, Bart has earned his stripes in management and CEO positions in different parts of the chemical industry. He has been active in established businesses but has started new business units and new companies as well. In 2011, Bart started his own management and consulting firm. He graduated with a BSc and MSc in chemical engineering from the KU Leuven Faculty of Bioscience Engineering and has additional training in Business. Bart is one of the main investors in our company.
Abstract:
A-membranes is a spin-off of VITO, a Flemish research institute focused on cleantech and sustainability, and the University of Antwerp. More than a decade of joint research and development in the field of membrane filtration, condensed in several patents (FunMem® technology), are the base for the spin-off.
The technology is centred around the development of a method to graft organic groups on the surface of ceramic materials.
The method was first developed in the lab on ceramics powders and then scaled up towards little, lab-size membranes.
In 2014, our team successfully developed a lab-process to functionalize industrial format multichannel membranes (length of 120 cm – about 4 ft). A milestone, and the beginning of years of intensive testing of the technology in lab and pilot test cases in several industries.
In 2017, an installation for the fully automatic characterisation and consequent functionalisation of up to 5 industrial format membranes simultaneously was commissioned: The FunMem® pilot-installation. The installation has meanwhile been boosted in capacity to cope with the growing interest in our grafted membranes. These projects provided plenty of production know-how but nonetheless remained too small in output to realise genuine commercial availability of our membranes. A-membranes were incorporated in 2021 to valorise the technology. Meanwhile, A-membranes have re-engineered the production technology to allow the production of industrial volumes.