Dr. Klaus Vossenkaul
Dr. Klaus Vossenkaul is an expert in membrane technology with more than 30 years of experience in the field of porous membranes, especially for wastewater treatment in so called membrane bioreactors (MBR). He has done his PHD in module design for ultrafiltration at the institute for process design (IVT) the University of Aachen (RWTH) working with Prof. R. Rautenbach, a pioneer and scientist in all fields of membrane technology. Klaus Vossenkaul then took over the leadership of the group for membranes in water and wastewater applications at the institute for process design (IVT/RWTH). After having developed the first plate module together with the company ROCHEM (Hamburg) he started his own membrane company PURON in 2001 to develop, produce and market a new hollowfiber module for MBR. Three years later he sold PURON to KOCH Industries and remained 5 years as managing director and head of R&D with the successor company of PURON (Koch Membrane Systems GmbH). Two years later (2012) he started his second own membrane company: MEMBION. This time he had the vision to improve MBR-technology on all different levels to increase the overall economic efficiency.
Leading wastewater treatment with MBR into an energy efficient and sustainable future
A membrane bioreactor (MBR) combines biological waste water treatment with membrane technology and leads to a significantly improved water quality with only have the space required. Bottlenecks of MBR so far are a high energy consumption for membrane flushing and fine screening requirement of the incoming wastewater.
The new membranes of Membion overcome these bottlenecks and offer economically attractive advantages with four design features:
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Membion´s "JetSplash"® technology is a pulsed aeration system that reduces the energy requirement for membrane flushing up to 90 %. Additionally, the investment cost for the equipment are reduced and there is no backwashing of the membranes required anymore.
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Membion “Single-header”-design fixes the hollowfiber membranes only at their bottom side, while hairs and fibrous compounds are stripped off from the free moving top ends resulting in lower pre-treatment needs.
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Membion “BundleTube”-design arranges membrane bundles inside of rectangular tubes with defined surrounding downward-flowing zones leading to further energy reduction and reduced space for module installation.
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Membion “Built2fit” modular design allows different module sizes, flexible in all dimensions (also as double-decker) according to customer requirements.
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First full scale references are in operation and demonstrate that Membion is a game changer in economic efficiency for wastewater treatment with MBR-technology.