ABOUT US

FIRMBASE PTE LTD, a Singapore-based company, was established by its founder Mr CT Pung in 2011 with the Mission to explore development opportunities in advanced materials to meet the growing needs on water, energy, and infrastructure.

FIRMBASE has invested and partnered with a leading specialty chemical company in China to develop, manufacture, and market of advanced polymers globally. It has its own polymerization development capabilities and manufacturing facilities in China, and international sales and technical support in Singapore.

Firmbase has:

  1. Developed a proprietary polymer to improve the hydrophilicity of PVDF UF membrane to increase the membrane pure water throughput, lower the energy during operation, and lengthen the operations uptime.

  2. Scaled up an ultra hydrophilic polymeric membrane technology that handles oil and grease level > 180mg/L for oil-water separation with high reliability and operations uptime.

The proprietary polymer is commercially available and the membrane technology is readily available for commercialization.

FIRMBASE is seeking partnership in terms of joint development, strategic market participation, or distributorship to bring these technologies and products into the various geographical markets.

MEMBRANE ENABLER

Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) ultrafiltration (UF) membranes are being widely used in water and wastewater treatment due to their excellent chemical and mechanical stability. However, the major shortcoming of these membranes is their strong hydrophobicity resulting in rapid flux decline and frequent back-flushing requirements which will shorten the life span of the membranes. Therefore, it is very important to enhance the hydrophilicity and mechanical strength of PVDF membrane. A common industrial practice to improve the hydrophilicity of PVDF is to add in hydrophilic additives such as polyethylene glycol (PEG) or polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) into the dope solution. However, the main drawback of this methodology is that, these hydrophilic additives are highly water soluble and hence, over time, the hydrophilicity of the PVDF membrane will be reduced. FIRMBASE’s hydroxyl functionalized polymer (4483) is added to solve this problem.

The hydroxyl functionalized polymer (4483) enables the formation of hydrogen bonds with water and thereby enhanced the permeability of the membrane. The monodispersed and highly branched macromolecules structure of this specialty polymer provides improved porosity and pore size distribution in the membrane for improve mechanical strength and anti-fouling. Lengthening the operations uptime of the membrane, increasing the clean water flux, and reducing the energy requirements.

1. Clean Water Flux (LMH/bar)) increased by >25%

2. Operating Pressure (bar) reduced by >33%

3. Contact Angle (degree) reduced by > 15%

Oily Water Membrane

FIRMBASE has scaled up a hydrophilic hollow-fibre ultrafiltration membrane technology for oil-water separation that increases operations uptime and potential to reduce pre-treatment footprint.

The membrane technology is also designed such that it can easily replace existing hollow-fibre ultrafiltration membranes. This eliminates the need costs and time to modify existing filtration systems.

This technology is for polymeric membrane and enables the membrane to withstand oily waste water of Oil and grease>180mg/L.  This technology is now available and we are seeking partnership in terms of joint market development into various geographical markets.

FIRMBASE is also seeking partnership in terms of joint development, strategic market participation, or distributorship to bring these technologies and products into the various geographical markets.

       
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