Forward Water Technologies licenses IP to Fujifilm

Forward Water Technologies has licensed intellectual property from FUJIFILM Corporation to safeguard its water treatment technology platform. 

Forward Water’s desalination system

Based on a technology invented at Queen's University by Dr. Philip Jessop, the publicly-traded Canadian company’s green desalination system purifies water with osmotic pressure. 
Using proprietary switchable salt, the system creates a salty solution that is capable of drawing pure water across a membrane without the use of heat or energy. Once this process is complete, the switchable salt is ‘switched off’ removed from the system and collected again for re-use.

The new agreement will patent Forward Water Technologies’ platform so it is able to fully leverage new FUJIFILM's forward osmosis technology.

One of the ambitions is to help reduce waste streams and return fresh water for reuse or surface release across numerous sectors such as industrial wastewater, oil and gas, mining, agriculture, and eventually municipal water supply and reuse markets. 

FUJIFILM’s play in the membrane technology space

Fujifilm Corporation, a well-known brand in the photography industry, has been in the membrane technology business since the 1980s and has been involved in the development of various membrane technologies for different applications.

It has been developing a range of water treatment membranes, including reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, microfiltration, nanofiltration and more recently its forward osmosis membrane technology. 

Fujifilm's forward osmosis technology has gained considerable recognition in recent years and in 2018, the company was awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2018 Global Technology Innovation Award for it. 

Forward osmosis is a water purification process in which water molecules move from a lower-concentration solution to a higher-concentration solution through a semi-permeable membrane. This process relies on the natural osmotic pressure gradient between two solutions, without the need for external pressure or energy.

Forward Water Technologies claims that forward osmosis has several advantages over conventional water purification technologies like reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration, including lower energy consumption, lower fouling, and higher water recovery rates.