[Singapore] Toray Secures Low-Fouling Reverse Osmosis Membrane Order for Changi NEWater Factory 3: 50 Million Gallons per Day, Completion in 2028

2026 年 9 月 17 日, Toray Industries announced that it has received an order for low-fouling Reverse Osmosis (RO) membranes for wastewater treatment from Singapore's Changi NEWater Factory 3 (CNF3). The plant is located in Changi East, Singapore, with a treatment capacity of 5000 万 gallons/day (the Singapore Public Utilities Board conventionally uses imperial gallons, equivalent to approximately 22.7 万 cubic meters/day), and is targeted for completion in 2028 年; it is led by the Public Utilities Board (PUB), with Sanli M&E Engineering undertaking design, procurement, and construction as the general contractor, and Toray Asia supplying the membranes and providing sales and technical support.

Threefold Confirmation Behind a Single Order

• Owner-side confirmation — Led by PUB, a national-level water management authority, and delivered under a design-procurement-construction general contracting model, this indicates that the project has entered the substantive procurement phase rather than being an exploratory intention;
• Technology route confirmation — The core process of NEWater is a dual-membrane combination of "microfiltration/Ultrafiltration + Reverse Osmosis + ultraviolet disinfection," with the RO membrane being the key unit determining product water quality and operational energy consumption. The selection of low-fouling RO membranes specifically for wastewater treatment points to a municipal wastewater reclamation scenario rather than seawater desalination;
• Supply chain confirmation — Toray is not entering this project for the first time but has been a long-term participant: the company has supplied water treatment membranes for multiple major water infrastructure projects in Singapore over the years, covering several NEWater factories and desalination plants. This order is defined by the company as a result of long-term operational performance validation of low-fouling RO membranes in the Reclaimed Water Reuse sector.

Why "Low-Fouling" RO Membranes

When using secondary effluent from municipal wastewater treatment plants as feedwater, the core contradiction facing the Reverse Osmosis system lies in the fact that residual organic matter, microbial metabolic products, and colloids form a fouling layer on the membrane surface, leading to increased transmembrane pressure differential, more frequent chemical cleaning, and shortened membrane lifespan. Low-fouling membranes typically weaken pollutant adsorption through surface hydrophilization modification, charge neutralization, and roughness reduction, at the cost of making trade-offs among Membrane Flux, salt rejection rate, and fouling resistance.

For large-scale Reclaimed Water plants, the economics of such trade-offs are very direct — extending the membrane replacement cycle by one year often reduces the cost per cubic meter of product water by more than the price difference of the membranes themselves. This is also the practical basis for Toray's repeated success in multiple Singapore projects.

Why Singapore Continues to Increase Investment in NEWater

Singapore is one of the few city-states in the world that systematically advances Reclaimed Water as a strategic water source. Constrained by its land area and natural freshwater endowment, the country has long built its water supply structure around the "Four National Taps" (local catchment water, imported water, NEWater, and desalinated water), among which NEWater and desalination are the two controllable incremental sources.

Under this framework, the significance of NEWater goes beyond "having one more water source" — it transforms wastewater treatment from a purely expenditure item into a supply asset that can be planned, priced, and predicted. A single plant such as Changi NEWater Factory Phase 3, reaching a scale of 5000 万 gallons/day, is already approaching the capacity level of a large municipal waterworks.

Global RO Membrane Market: Demand Driven by Four Forces

In its announcement, Toray attributed order growth to four factors: population growth, industrial development, intensifying water scarcity caused by climate change, and tightening environmental regulations. This is consistent with actual market trends in recent years — industrial wastewater near-zero discharge, municipal Reclaimed Water utilization, and seawater desalination are all expanding simultaneously, with industrial enterprises' requirements for water reuse rates often adding pressure from their own water costs and supply chain audits beyond regulatory requirements.

Toray stated that it will further strengthen advanced membrane technology, enhance global production capacity, and provide responsive technical support, with target regions covering Asia-Pacific and beyond.

What It Means for Us: TIANYI TECH's Assessment

TIANYI TECH has long served municipal and Industrial Park wastewater treatment and Reclaimed Water Reuse clients. From this order, we identify three transferable lessons:

• Membrane selection for large-scale Reclaimed Water projects should be moved forward to the process validation stage — the applicable scenarios of low-fouling membranes, conventional membranes, and seawater desalination membranes differ significantly; a wrong selection will repeatedly charge you after commissioning in the form of cleaning frequency and replacement cycles;
• Pretreatment determines the lifespan of RO — in Reclaimed Water scenarios, the performance ceiling of Reverse Osmosis membranes is more determined by the upstream biochemical effluent quality and the stability of the pretreatment unit, rather than the membrane elements themselves;
• Include cleaning and replacement costs in the full life cycle — for large-scale projects, calculate based on a cycle of 20 年 or more; membrane replacement, chemical cleaning waste liquid disposal, and production shutdown losses combined often account for a significant share of the per-ton water cost, and should be compared together with the initial investment during selection.

About TIANYI TECH (TIANYI LIMITED): TIANYI TECH is deeply engaged in the fields of wastewater treatment and Reclaimed Water Reuse, committed to providing efficient, low-carbon, and sustainable water treatment solutions for municipal and industrial customers.