The MBR Book: Principles and Applications of Membrane

16 The MBR Book
demonstration as an iMBR at pilot scale. The acquisition of Puron by Koch in 2005 –
Koch being a major membrane and membrane systems supplier and owner of Fluid
Systems (acquired from another UK water utility, Anglian Water Group) – would
appear to signal a strategic move into the MBR technology by a company normally
associated with pure water membrane systems.
The position of Memcor has attracted widespread interest across the water sector.
Memcor is a long-established HF microfiltration membrane supplier (formed as
Memtec in 1982). It was acquired by USFilter in 1997 and was part of the Veolia
group, until sold to Siemens in 2004. In 1998, the company launched an immersed
membrane process and introduced the MemJet ® iMBR in 2003. Memcor represent a
potentially very significant player in the MBR market and are already on a par with
Zenon in potable water treatment.
Unsurprisingly, in North America the MBR market is currently dominated by
Zenon, and the company also have the significant share of installed capacity in
many countries where they operate. According to a recently published review of the
North American market (Yang et al., 2006), 182 of the 258 installations (i.e. 71%)
provided by the four leading MBR suppliers in the USA, Canada and Mexico are
Zenon plant (Table 1.3). Worldwide, however, there appear to be as many Mitsubishi
Rayon plant as Zenon plant, but only two of these are in the USA and the plants are
generally smaller. Indeed, as of 2005 nine of the ten biggest MBR plant worldwide
were Zenon plant. Some consolidation in the marketplace has recently taken place
with the acquisition of Zenon Environmental by GE Water and Process Technologies
in March 2006.
On the other hand, in South-East Asia and in Japan in particular, the market is
dominated by the Japanese membrane suppliers and Kubota specifically. Mitsubishi
Rayon also has a significant presence in this region, particularly for industrial effluent
treatment. In the UK – the EU country which has the largest number of MBRs for
sewage treatment – all but three of the 21 municipal wastewater MBRs are Kubota
(as of 2005). This trend is not repeated across mainland Europe, however, where
Zenon again tend to dominate. For small flows, and in particular for more challenging
high-strength industrial wastes, the dominance of Kubota and Zenon is much
less pronounced. For example, Wehrle held 10% of the total European MBR market
in 2002 (Frost and Sullivan, 2003), compared with 17% for Zenon at that time,
which gives an indication of the significance of the industrial effluent treatment
market.
Table 1.3 Number of installations (municipal and industrial) of four MBR providers
worldwide and in North America (Yang et al., 2006)
Worldwide USA Canada Mexico
Zenon 331 (204 � 127) 155 (132 � 23) 31 (23 � 8) 6 (1 � 5)
USFilter 16 (15 � 1) 13 (13 � 0) 0 0
Kubota 1538 (1138 � 400) 51 (48 � 3) 0 0
Mitsubishi Rayon 374 (170 � 204) 2 (2 � 0) 0 0
Total 2259 (1527 � 732) 221 (23 � 8) 31 (23 � 8) 6 (1 � 5)