Toray Industries, Inc. (headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Akihiro Nikkaku; hereinafter referred to as "Toray") announced today that the company received an order to supply its hollow fiber ultrafiltration (UF) membrane module TORAYFIL® to what is going to be Southeast Asia’s largest membrane water filtration facility in Bangkok, Kingdom of Thailand.
In Southeast Asia, Toray has been supplying reverse osmosis membranes to water treatment facilities for seawater desalination as well as waste water and sewage reuse, etc., which have been a top priority for Singapore as a nation. Being awarded the order for this major water purification facility project in Thailand is an opportunity for the company to respond to the needs for improving the quality of tap water for domestic use in Southeast Asia. In this project, Toray will supply TORAYFIL® UF membranes for installation in the water purification plant in 2016, which is expected to start operation in 2017.
The facility in Bangkok that will utilize TORAYFIL® will have a processing capacity of 110,000 m3 of water a day and will be the pioneer large-scale membrane-based water purification plant in the country. The facility will be built and operated by TTW Public Company Ltd.（TTW） that has Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and CH. Karnchang Public Co., Ltd. as major shareholders. It treats water from Tachin River which is a tributary river of Chao Phraya River, using TORAYFIL® and supplies high-quality tap water to Bangkok citizens, who have been struggling with water quality problems.
TTW compared and considered water purification membranes from prominent membrane manufacturers around the world and selected Toray’s product from the perspectives of performance such as durability, and filtration precision and cost from the public water aspect.
In Thailand, a number of large-scale, membrane-based water purification projects are expected to be introduced for drinking water in the near future. As a result of in the improvement in living standards in the country, there has been an increase in the demand for high-quality tap water. This demand for higher quality potable water is best achieved by membrane-based purification methods, which are easy to operate and can purify water more safely and securely compared with the existing rapid filtration method using sand. Moreover, the application of water purification membrane treatment in the above project is expected to lead to expanded utilization of similar membrane based projects by neighboring countries in Southeast Asia.
The project has Goshu Kosan Co., Ltd. of Thailand in charge of the process design and system development to create a facility that would maximize the performance of TORAYFIL® UF membrane modules.
In its Green Innovation Business Expansion (GR) Project under the medium-term management program Project AP-G 2016, Toray is aiming to expand businesses that contribute to solving environmental, resource and energy issues.
The expansion of the water treatment business is very much the core of the GR Project. Toray, as a comprehensive membrane manufacturer, will continue to strongly promote business activities that would contribute to solving the issues related to water resources by offering TORAYFIL® UF membranes, such as the ones in Thailand, as well as steadily winning orders for ROMEMBRA® RO membranes, which have the major share of the market, and with MEMBRAY® membrane separation bioreactors (MBR) for sewage and wastewater applications.
