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In the vast landscape of the chlor-alkali industry, the ion-exchange membrane electrolyzer is without doubt the "heart", and primary brine purification is the first and most demanding line of defence protecting that heart. As a "pioneering enterprise of ceramic membrane technology in China", Jiuwu Hi-Tech, with its independently developed ceramic membrane process, has successfully delivered nearly 200 chlor-alkali projects worldwide, supporting a total caustic soda capacity of more than 24 million tons per year.
For a long time, how to guarantee the high quality and high stability of refined brine has been a common challenge facing the entire industry. The challenges of conventional processes are mainly concentrated in the following four aspects:
1. Poor raw salt adaptability, persistently high production costs
Conventional organic membrane processes are extremely sensitive to raw salt quality. A slight change in calcium and magnesium content in raw salt, or an inverted Ca/Mg ratio, may cause filtration system upset and fluctuations in outlet water quality. Enterprises are forced to purchase expensive high-quality salt to maintain production stability, and raw material costs rise sharply.
2. Long process flow, compounding system risks
The conventional brine purification process has many stages — salt dissolving, pressurized dissolved air, pre-treatment, reaction, clarification, filtration and secondary purification connected in series, with dense control points. Fluctuation at any node can trigger a chain reaction, making it difficult to run electrolyzers at full load. Bulky equipment and open design not only waste space but also bring salt mist volatilization corrosion and environmental hazards.
3. Short membrane material life, high operation and maintenance costs
Organic membrane materials inherently have tolerance shortcomings — not resistant to strong acids and alkalis, not resistant to oxidants, prone to swelling and deformation, short regeneration and cleaning cycles, and extremely difficult operation and maintenance. Failure to stably provide refined brine, letting it flow into the secondary brine purification system and the ion-exchange membrane electrolyzer system, will cause incalculable losses; repairing damaged ion membranes is costly, and membrane damage caused by brine quality problems is often cumulative and hidden — by the time the problem is found, the loss has already occurred.
4. Insufficient automation, difficult to control human risk
Conventional processes rely on a large amount of manual operation, from dosing control to backwash regeneration, and every link carries the possibility of human error. In continuous large-scale production, the uncertainty brought by human factors has become a hidden risk constraining long-cycle stable operation of the plant.
These bottleneck problems are exactly where Jiuwu Hi-Tech's ceramic membrane technology comes into play.
Jiuwu Hi-Tech's primary brine purification process centres on inorganic ceramic membranes with a pore size of 50 nm, using efficient "cross-flow filtration" to refine coarse brine in a single step. Unlike conventional terminal filtration, cross-flow filtration does not easily form a filter cake layer on the membrane surface, delivering stable flux and long acid-cleaning cycles, fundamentally ensuring continuous and stable outlet water quality.
Actual operating data shows that after treatment with Jiuwu ceramic membranes, refined brine keeps suspended solids (SS) steadily below 0.5 ppm and calcium and magnesium (Ca²⁺+Mg²⁺) content below 1 ppm, far better than prevailing industry standards. This high-precision filtration effect means the brine load entering the chelating resin tower is greatly reduced, the resin regeneration cycle is extended, and breakthrough risk is significantly lowered, thus building a solid barrier for stable operation of secondary purification and the ion-exchange membrane electrolyzer.
50 nm — Ceramic membrane pore size
≤0.5 ppm — Suspended solids (SS)
<1 ppm — Calcium and magnesium content
Jiuwu Hi-Tech's ceramic membrane technology eliminates hidden hazards in ion membrane operating conditions from the source and builds multiple safety lines, systematically solving chlor-alkali production pain points. In terms of stabilizing ion membrane operating conditions, the technology offers three core advantages:
Wide raw salt adaptability
Inorganic ceramic membranes resist acid and alkali corrosion with strong chemical stability, a pH range of 0–14, and immunity to oxidants. They can stably process rock salt, sea salt, lake salt, underground brine and salts with inverted Ca/Mg ratios, reducing raw material costs while ensuring stable brine quality.
High batch-to-batch stability
Ceramic membrane filtration precision is constant, with no swelling, deformation or ageing decay. Combined with a DCS (distributed control system) and automatic acid cleaning, it achieves precise impurity removal from coarse brine with minimal batch fluctuation, providing the ion membrane with continuous and consistent feed conditions.
No secondary contamination
A fully enclosed system design completely blocks salt mist volatilization from corroding surrounding equipment and prevents external impurities from mixing into refined brine, safeguarding brine purity at the environmental level.
For chlor-alkali enterprises, the value of a brine purification system is reflected not only in outlet water quality but also in comprehensive lifecycle benefits. Through dual upgrades in materials and intelligent control, Jiuwu Hi-Tech's ceramic membrane technology completely overturns the conventional equipment operation and maintenance model.
The main body of Jiuwu Hi-Tech equipment is manufactured from all-titanium material, thoroughly solving the industry's chronic problem of frequent shutdowns caused by corrosion and detachment in conventional rubber-lined and plastic-lined equipment. Inorganic ceramic membranes themselves have high mechanical strength and resist acids, alkalis and oxidants; membrane tube service life exceeds 5 years, and overall equipment life reaches more than 20 years.
In projects including Cangzhou, Hebei and Yunnan Yunjing Forestry & Paper, ceramic membrane modules have operated continuously and stably for more than 10 years, validating reliability with time.
At the intelligent control level, the system achieves a high degree of automation and fully enclosed operation. One-touch start/stop, unattended operation and automatic acid cleaning reduce the risk of human error to a minimum; the fully enclosed system completely eliminates corrosion of surrounding equipment by on-site salt mist volatilization, helping enterprises easily achieve 6S standardized management.
5 years+ — Membrane tube service life
20 years+ — Overall equipment life
10 years+ — Verified operating record
The excellence of Jiuwu Hi-Tech's ceramic membrane technology has been deeply validated in the engineering practice of many industry benchmark enterprises.
Tangshan Sanyou Chlor-Alkali · Four Repeat Orders in Fourteen Years
Jiuwu Hi-Tech has cooperated with the company since 2012. From the successful commissioning of the first-phase 125 m² equipment to winning the bid for a 250 m² fully automated system in 2024, four repeat orders over fourteen years are not only a touchstone of product quality but also an epitome of the enterprise's leap from conventional manufacturing to "intelligent manufacturing".
Jiangxi Lihua Chemical · A Pioneer Sample of the Digital-Intelligent Foundation
After introducing the first batch of equipment in 2020, Lihua Chemical fully installed five sets of fully automated systems in 2021, completely replacing the original organic membranes. The system not only greatly reduced raw salt procurement costs and solid waste disposal expenses, but its fully enclosed, data-driven operating characteristics also provided accurate and continuous underlying process parameters for Lihua Chemical's self-built caustic soda big data platform, becoming a pioneer sample of green intelligent manufacturing in the industry.
From Tangshan Sanyou's fourteen-year commitment to Jiangxi Lihua Chemical's digital-intelligent integration, and to project deployments across more than 40 countries and regions worldwide, Jiuwu Hi-Tech is continuing to provide the chlor-alkali industry with a mature "stable, long-life, intelligent" solution through leading ceramic membrane technology.
In the industry's evolution toward efficiency and green development, this time-tested "membrane" solution is building a new cornerstone for high-quality development of the chlor-alkali industry.
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