Climate change is draining the Earth. According to the report ‘Drought in Europe August 2022’ published by the European Union’s Joint Research Center (JRC), the European region has been struck by the worst drought in 500 years. With 47% of European countries measuring less than average rainfall, the soil moisture content is in warning condition, damaging plant and crop yields. This issue, however, is not limited to Europe. Due to global droughts, soils in the western United States are the driest recorded in 1200 years, and prolonged droughts in Africa and elsewhere have increased global starvation. This is a time when the phrase ‘water scarcity’ feels more severe than ever. Gaining attention amid the global water shortage is the ‘Water Industry’, and with water treatment technology receiving the spotlight, LG Chem is leading the industry with RO membranes applied with their proprietary Thin-Film Nanocomposite (TFN) technology. Take a closer look at LG Chem’s RO membrane!

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The Blue Gold of the 21st Century, Water

Water is commonly referred to as the ‘Blue Gold’ of the 21^st Century, indicating how rare water is. Here comes a question; why is water so scarce, when approximately 70% of the Earth is covered with water? It’s a common sense that a great large amount of water exists on our planet. Yet, taking out the salty sea water, only 2.5% of the total amount of water can be consumed as drinking water. What’s worse, a huge proportion of this consists of permanent snow and glaciers, which leaves less than 0.3% of actual water that humans can utilize. This explains the saying, “water is as valuable as gold.”

Perhaps, water is a more valuable presence to humanity than assumed. Clearly, water is directly connected to humans’ survival. It might be hard to imagine, as water is so close to our lives, but if water disappeared overnight, the mankind’s daily life and basic right to live would be under threat.

Water Industry Grows to the Market Size of $1 Trillion

As such, the significance of water cannot be overemphasized. In recent years, water industry is gaining more public attention as the importance of water rises along with the water shortage problem. The term water industry refers to all businesses that produce and supply water necessary for daily life and industrial purposes. It includes purification, transportation and treatment of sewage and waste water, sewage management, and desalination business that turns seawater into fresh water. Recently, issues such as intensified water shortage, population growth, rapid urbanization, and increased water demand due to economic growth are accelerating the expansion of water industry. According to the UK’s 2022 Global Water Intelligence (GWI) Waterdata, the global water industry market size will expand from about $831.7 billion in 2021 to $998.9 billion in 2027. Analyzing the size of the current global water industry market by country, the United States has the largest market at about $150 billion, followed by China and Japan with $105 billion and $86.7 billion respectively. In terms of market size alone, the water industry has already surpassed semiconductors and shipbuilding, and can be said to be a major global industry.

In the water industry, which is now considered a new growth engine for national economic development, LG Chem is standing out based on their excellent water treatment membrane technology. In April 2014, LG Chem acquired ‘NanoH2O’, a US-based water treatment membrane manufacturer, securing the core technology for reverse osmosis membranes. To this, the company added their proprietary polymer synthesis/processing technology and global marketing network, entering the RO membrane business in earnest. Since then, further research and development led to the introduction of various product groups, including not only RO membranes for seawater desalination but also for industrial and household uses. As a result, LG Chem has been successfully attracting large-scale products in the global market.

LG Chem’s RO Membrane Receives Global Attention

In 2016, LG Chem won a 250,000-ton RO membrane project based in Oman, the Middle East, only two years after their market entry. Again, in the following year of 2017, the company was selected as the sole supplier of RO membranes for a seawater desalination plant with a capacity of 300,000 tons to be built in El Galala and Port Said, the Red Sea region of Egypt. LG Chem’s success in winning large-scale orders in the early stage of market entry attributes entirely to their excellent RO membrane technology.

As the name suggests, LG Chem’s RO membrane applies the reverse osmosis technology. Let’s recall the principle of osmotic pressure from our high school science experiment. Say that you soaked cucumbers in salt water. You would remember seeing the water move from the cucumbers, with higher water concentration, towards the salt water. As a result, the water would have drained out of the cucumbers, turning them into pickles. This phenomenon is known as osmosis. Reverse osmosis is the reverse application of the principle of osmosis. According to the principle of osmotic pressure, water moves through a semipermeable membrane from low concentration to high concentration. Yet, when high pressure is applied to the top of a concentrated solution, the water in the concentrated solution moves through the semipermeable membrane to the low concentration side. This is the principle of reverse osmosis. LG Chem’s RO membrane purifies water using this principle. When unpurified water reaches the RO membrane, the water pressure prevents all contaminants from passing through, and water passes through an extremely fine filter, leaving only the pure water.

Among numerous water treatment membranes based on reverse osmosis, LG Chem’s RO membrane is recognized for its excellent product quality in the global market. In particular, RO membranes for seawater desalination are leading the global seawater desalination market with an unrivaled salt removal rate of 99.89%. That means, if seawater passes through LG Chem’s RO membrane, only 11 out of 10,000 sodium chloride molecules remain. In addition, LG Chem’s seawater desalination and industrial RO membranes apply the company’s proprietary Thin-Film Nanocomposite (TFN) technology to coat nanoparticles on the surface of the membrane to maintain the salt removal rate while increasing the flux by 20% compared to other products. This gives LG Chem’s membranes an energy-saving advantage, as they do not require high pressure.

From Desalination to Salt Lake Lithium-Extraction Projects,
LG Chem’s RO Membrane is Your Companion!

Recently, LG Chem won a large-scale seawater desalination project in Israel based on their global competitiveness, and from 2024, more than one-third of Israel’s freshwater production (sum of purified water from Ashdod, Palmachim, Hadera, Ashkelon plants) will be supplied by LG Chem’s RO membranes. In addition to seawater desalination projects, LG Chem’s RO technology is leading the company to remarkable achievements in various industries. For example, in March 2023, LG Chem supplied RO membranes to China’s largest salt lake lithium extraction project led by CITIC Group. Generally, in order to obtain lithium dissolved in salt lakes, water must be evaporated to increase its concentration of lithium. With the reverse osmosis process using LG Chem’s RO membranes, it allows to quickly filter out the water molecules without applying heat. CITIC Group evaluated that LG Chem’s RO membrane was able to drastically reduce the time and energy required for lithium production. Starting with this project, LG Chem plans to actively participate in other salt lake lithium projects in China and South America.

Furthermore, LG Chem is collaborating with Korea University of South Korea to develop next-generation RO membranes with Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) process. It is a technology that directly extracts lithium from salt lakes, which shortens the lithium concentration process from months or more to a few hours. LG Chem is researching RO membrane materials that can increase the recovery rate and purity of lithium and improve durability within this process. When direct extraction of lithium is fully applied, it is expected that the process will be simplified and the extraction efficiency will be higher.

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LG Chem’s RO membrane not only provides a solution to water shortage amid the climate crisis, but is also expanding its scope of use based on the company’s excellent technology. LG Chem will continue to lead the global water treatment membrane market by thinking of ways to establish sustainable life for humanity and keeping up investment on new technologies.