Aquaporin Inside®

Aquaporin Inside® technology incorporates aquaporin proteins to replicate nature’s own water filtration process. Specialist water channels, aquaporin proteins exist in the membrane of all living cells. They can be found in every living organism, from plants and animals to human beings, and are essential to all life on Earth.

Placed within the cell membrane, aquaporin proteins transport water – and only water – in and out of the cell. Billions of years of evolution have made them extremely efficient and highly selective, like a superhighway for water. They are far better than any manmade water filter. One square meter of synthetic manmade membrane can filter around 50 liters of water per hour. One gram of aquaporins can filter 700 liters per second.

We incorporate this natural technology into all our products to enable fast, energy-efficient and natural water filtration in a wide range of applications, from industrial effluent treatment to food & beverage concentration and in-home water purification.

In simple terms, traditional synthetic water filtration membranes are dense polymeric sheets containing tiny holes. These holes are micron-to-nanometer size and only allow very small particles to pass through. In contrast, Aquaporin Inside® membranes harness nature’s tremendous capability for selective molecule transport. The membranes mimic the outside of a cell, with aquaporin proteins in a stabilizing membrane layer. Thanks to their specialized natural architecture, these aquaporin proteins allow only water to pass through. This makes them faster and more selective than traditional synthetic water filtration membranes.

Aquaporin Inside® membranes are commercially available as flat sheet or hollow fiber, for both forward osmosis (FO) and reverse osmosis (RO) applications.

Highly efficient and exceptionally light, our water filtration technology developed with NASA could help realize longer distance space travel.