Trustech Visits Jiangsu Future Membrane Technology Innovation Center

Aug 9th , a delegation from Trustech, a leading manufacture in the hollow fiber membrane spinning field, visited the Jiangsu Future Membrane Technology Innovation Center for technical exchanges. As the only manufacturer in China that covers the full industry chain of hollow fiber membrane spinneret, hollow fiber membrane spinning machines, and RO flat-sheet membrane coating equipment for the fields of environmental water purification, gas separation membranes, and medical hemodialysis membranes, Trustech — a China leading membrane spinning machine and hollow fiber membrane spinneret manufacture — focused this visit on the engineering and industrial implementation of membrane materials. The company explored in depth a collaborative model of “precision equipment manufacturing + public technology platform,” jointly seeking new pathways to transform high-end membrane materials from the laboratory to the production line.

The Jiangsu Future Membrane Technology Innovation Center was jointly established by Kunshan Development Zone, Nanjing Tech University, and Nanjing Membrane Materials Industry Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd. It is a provincial public technology service platform dedicated to tackling “bottleneck” technologies in high-end membrane materials, integrating basic scientific research, engineering development, pilot-scale amplification, achievement transformation, and testing services. Relying on the National Engineering Research Center for Special Separation Membranes, the center closely aligns with major national strategic needs in “dual carbon” goals, life and health, new materials, and high-end manufacturing. It focuses on cutting-edge fundamental theories in the membrane field and common key industrial technologies, with the goal of building a domestically leading and world-class source of membrane technology innovation, opening up the entire chain from basic laboratory research to industrial implementation, and driving the high-quality development of the membrane materials industry chain.

Among its five key membrane-technology tracks, the directions of water treatment membranes, biopharmaceutical membranes, and special functional membranes are all core application scenarios for hollow fiber membranes and are highly consistent with the precision spinning equipment track in which Trustech has been deeply engaged. At present, Trustech has already provided the Jiangsu Future Membrane Technology Innovation Center with hollow fiber membrane spinneret services to support new product development. Focusing on the needs for spinning consistency and precise porosity control in products such as high-precision nanofiltration membranes and hemodialysis membranes, the two sides are jointly optimizing spinneret flow-channel design and spinning process parameters, providing key equipment support for the center’s pilot-scale amplification and performance verification.

As the lead drafting organization of the group standard Hollow Fiber Membrane Spinneret Plate, Trustech has continuously led industry iteration since it launched its 5th-generation spinneret plate in 2018. The new-generation FCT 9th-generation hollow fiber membrane spinneret plate showcased during this visit embodies the company’s ten years of technological accumulation. Featuring an original pressure-stabilizing flow-channel structural design and building strong technical barriers based on more than 40 granted patents, it can precisely control the inner diameter, wall thickness, and porosity of hollow fiber membranes, while increasing single-hole multi-core spinning efficiency by 4–8 times compared with traditional products. The simultaneously displayed special-shaped plum-blossom-type spinneret plates and triple-fiber reinforced spinneret plates point directly to the forefront of the industry.

Trustech’s newly developed “Membrane Toolbox” online auxiliary decision-support tool converts more than a decade of process experience into interactive data models, covering the entire chain from capacity estimation and R&D scheme selection to equipment configuration and process tuning. It forms a complementary relationship with the innovation center’s pilot process verification system.

The Innovation Center has established four core platforms: a public platform for membrane performance R&D and testing, a public application R&D platform, an R&D and pilot platform for biomedical membranes, and a high-precision nanofiltration membrane pilot production line, thus possessing complete conditions for small-scale and pilot-scale development. It has also obtained the province’s first CMA testing qualification for membrane elements and equipment, enabling full-chain testing from “membrane sheet – membrane module – membrane equipment” and issuing test reports with legal validity. The platform’s equipment is open and shared with universities, research institutes, and membrane industry enterprises across the Yangtze River Delta, which is highly consistent with Trustech’s industrial ecosystem layout of “technology R&D – equipment manufacturing – application services.”

According to a representative of Trustech, the company invests 15% of its annual revenue in R&D and has established a complete innovation chain from materials to pilot-scale testing: “We hope to use high-precision hollow fiber spinneret plates, hollow fiber membrane spinning machines, and RO flat-sheet membrane coating equipment as our technological fulcrum, and combine this with the Innovation Center’s strengths in engineering scale-up, testing and certification, and pilot verification, so as to jointly overcome the ‘bottleneck’ problems of high-end separation membranes and support the independent controllability of domestically produced membrane materials in fields such as biomedicine, electronic chemicals, and new energy.”

During the visit, technical teams from both sides held in-depth discussions on topics such as online monitoring of hollow fiber membrane spinning processes, uniformity control in multi-core spinning, and correlation models between membrane product performance and spinning parameters. This exchange not only signifies that Trustech’s leading position in the field of high-end separation membrane equipment has received professional recognition from a provincial public technology service platform, but also showcases the transformation of Chinese membrane equipment enterprises from single equipment suppliers into comprehensive solution providers offering “equipment + process + service.”

With the deepening implementation of “dual carbon” strategies and new materials industry policies, Trustech is using spinneret technology as a key link, leveraging the engineering and testing strengths of the Jiangsu Future Membrane Technology Innovation Center to jointly accelerate the industrialization process of domestically produced high-end membrane materials, so that the purification of every drop of water, every hemodialysis treatment, and every kilowatt-hour of green electricity generation shines with the light of China’s membrane technology.