Toray Membrane Middle East | World Engineering Day

Sustainable desalination

Toray Membrane Middle East (TMME) helps the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region meet its need for fresh water, despite the challenges posed by an arid climate and rapidly expanding demand.

Based in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, TMME was founded in 2014. It draws on the expertise of its Japanese parent company, Toray Industries, which has been manufacturing filtration products – membranes for desalination, water reuse, and purification – since 1968.

To secure sufficient fresh water supplies in the region, Toray’s sophisticated membrane modules use the delicate yet complex process of reverse osmosis. Used in desalination plants, the high-precision membranes filter out salt and other impurities and have advantages over the conventional practice of heating seawater and condensing the resultant steam.

“It’s a far more efficient and sustainable process, consuming around one third of the energy used in comparison to traditional thermal desalination,” says Tatsuya Tamura, President of TMME.

Local solutions

Everyone knows seawater is salty, but the waters of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are 30% more salty than ocean seawater – typical levels exceed 40 grams per liter. To cope with the particularly high salinity of the area, TMME has developed the membrane technology that offers a local solution to local challenges, ensuring water security.

This desire to respond to the needs of its local customers, by providing membrane products reliably and quickly, underpinned the company’s decision to have its own membrane manufacturing facility in Dammam.

“It takes 45 days to ship material from Asia, so this is a far more sustainable solution,” says Mohanad Aldhoheyan, Director of Operations at TMME.

Where in the world?

Toray’s global membrane business has offices, production bases, and research laboratories across the MENA region, the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

The company’s membrane products have applications in wastewater treatment plants that drive economies worldwide, from the pharmaceutical industry in India to manufacturers of semiconductors in Taiwan.

Sustainable support

TMME is building its own R&D facility in Dammam, a Middle East Water Technology Center, to deepen its understanding of, and sustainable response to, the challenges of the region.

In recognizing that continuity of service is a key sustainability issue, too, the company has developed a vast and highly responsive warehousing operation.

“Our sustainability vision informs everything we do, including reliable support for our customers. It’s not sustainable for customers to be without the modules they need to supply people with safe drinking water,” says Tamura.

What does a sustainable future look like?

For TMME, it’s about providing sustainable water solutions in the harshest of environments and being at the forefront of the MENA region’s commitment to SDG 6, which aims to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

“We’re playing a vital role in the stable supply of fresh water, and that keeps us highly motivated,” says Omar Alsobaihi, Business Development Manager at TMME.