IMSTEC Through the Years

At the 12th IMSTEC conference dinner, the founder of IMSTEC, Professor Tony Fane, reflected on the origins and evolution of the conference. His remarks capture the spirit and vision that have shaped IMSTEC over the years.

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IMTEC ’83 to IMSTEC ‘25

A trip down Membrane Memory Lane

A G (Tony) Fane,

UNESCO Centre for Membranes, UNSW

Patron Membrane Society of Australasia

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[The following is based on a brief presentation during the IMSTEC 2025 conference dinner, plus a few added thoughts]

 

I have attended all IMSTEC conferences and typically I have been asked to say a few words at the dinner.  I thought I had escaped this time, until I was asked yesterday. So the bad news is that I haven’t prepared a lengthy Power Point presentation, - and the good news is that I haven’t prepared a lengthy Power Point presentation. One thing I do have with me is the original program for the 1st IMTEC in 1983 (see below). That’s from 42 years ago when many of the delegates here were not born or were in primary school. So, with the help of this program let’s take a brief stroll down Membrane Memory Lane.

 

Firstly some thoughts on membranes in 1983. it was relatively early days in membrane technology - for example it was not on the syllabus for Chemical Engineering degrees. Membranes were new/somewhat exotic/rather expensive – but with lots of promise. Reverse Osmosis was starting to be used in desalination, mainly in the Middle East, and was also being used in the Dairy Industry. Ultrafiltration and Microfiltration found use in processing high value materials and that excluded water and most wastewaters. 1983 was significant in Australia as it was the year Memtec formed; the following year they launched on the ASX and, as they say, the rest is history. Memtec is now Memcor and a key part of Du Pont Water Solutions with a global presence.   

 

In 1983 I was a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at UNSW. I had started membrane research a few years earlier with a colleague, Chris Fell, after reading a paper found by our final year project student. Prior to this paper membranes were not on my radar. The paper was titled, “Ultrafiltration, a new separation technique for the Chemical Process Industry” by Alan Michaels (Prof at MIT and founder of Amicon, an early UF membrane supplier).  I just fell in love with ultrafiltration. That year I published my first real membrane paper in the emerging Journal of Membrane Science and there was a ‘membrane buzz”, in part due to Memtec and interest in the Department of Industry in Canberra. Around that time Dr Alan Jones (DITAC, Canberra) published his “Little Red Book”, ‘Membrane and Separation Technology: The Australian Perspective’ which estimated the annual local membrane market in 1983 to be ca $ 8.3m ($ 30m in current $); today the annual market could exceed $ 1bn. 1983 was very early days for membrane technology in Australia.  

I had attended an ACS Conference on Ultrafiltration in Washington in 1979 and been inspired by meeting many leading membranologists. In 1983 it was time for a major membrane conference in Australia. I persuaded my colleagues at UNSW that we should run an International Membrane Technology Conference, which we called IMTEC ’83. (The S in IMSTEC was added for our 3rd conference in 1992 on the suggestion of Hans Coster to signify our interest in ‘membrane Science’). 

 

The mission statement for IMTEC ’83 reads:

Membrane Technology is experiencing a rapid growth on a worldwide basis, and Australian industry and business cannot afford to ignore these new developments. IMTEC’83 is the first conference of its kind in Australia and aims to bring together active membrane workers from overseas and within Australia and those who wish to know more about the many opportunities offered by this rapidly developing technology.  

 

IMTEC ’83 was very successful with about 200 delegates and attracted many international people and several of the contemporary world leaders and pioneers in membranes, for example, Plenaries were given by;

• Harry Lonsdale (RO pioneer, founding editor J Membrane Science);

• Alan Michaels (‘the father of UF’, founder of Amicon Membranes);

• Heiner Strathmann (Electrodialysis pioneer, guru);

• Bill Koros (Gas Separations pioneer, guru);

• Enrico Drioli (Founding President of European Membrane Society);

• M Nakagaki (Founding President Membrane Society of Japan).

 

You can see from the ’83 program that we had a very comprehensive range of topics that illustrated the promise and potential of these new types of separation process.

There were some non-membrane highlights including a boomerang throwing competition (each delegate received an IMSTEC ’83 boomerang at registration) on the university sports oval as part of the ‘informal mixer’. The conference dinner was a sunset Sydney Harbour dinner cruise with spectacular prawns and music by Dr Michel Lefebvre on the clarinet.

 

We (UNSW) then ran another IMTEC in 1988, followed by IMSTECs on an irregular basis until the 7th IMSTEC in 2010 was run by the newly formed Membrane Society of Australasia (MSA). There was great relief at UNSW when MSA took control of IMSTEC management – ensuring regular 3 yearly meetings moving around the country. From my observation this arrangement works beautifully.

 

So, how does IMSTEC ’25 compare with IMTEC ’83?

Amir gave us a breakdown for this conference, and we have the IMTEC’83 program.

• For example, IMSTEC ’25 has RO/NF at 20% - IMTEC ’83 had 17% RO and no mention of NF;

• IMSTEC ‘25 has UF at 10% - IMTEC ’83 had 34% (mainly applications in Food, Dairy etc);

• IMSTEC ’25 has Electro, ED etc at 25% - IMTEC ’83 had 10%;

• For MD we have 10% - in IMTEC ’83 it was 0%;

• For water/waste we have 35% - in IMTEC ’83 was 20% (membranes were expensive);

• For energy related we have 20% - in IMTEC ’83 was 1% (one paper).

 

Topics not covered in IMTEC ‘83

• No MBRs;

• No NF per se;

• No MD or FO;

• No 2D materials, graphene, GO, MOFs etc;

• No 3D printing, PFAS, Nanoplastics, No Machine Learning or AI;

• Also No Power Point – slides and transparencies used, no last minute changes.

 

IMTEC ’83 had an emphasis on membrane applications and in contrast IMSTEC ’25 has an emphasis on novel membranes and clever material science. Another intriguing difference is that the opening plenaries feature quite different views of membrane transport in RO. Harry Lonsdale (1983) was an early supporter of the Solution-Diffusion model whereas Meny Elimelech (2025) is a recent advocate for the Pore Flow with Compaction model.  It’s good to see that membrane Science continues to evolve.  

 

One final observation on the differences between IMTEC ’83 and IMSTEC ’25 is in the composition of the speakers and delegates, showing how interest and activity has changed globally over 4 decades. In 1983 it was a male-dominated group with overseas speakers from the US, Europe and Japan. There were several SE Asians thanks to special funding from Canberra. However, there were no speakers from China or South Korea. In 2025 the gender balance may favour females and representation from China and South Korea is strong. This may reflect the increasing role these countries now play in membrane technology.

 

What the two conferences have in common are:

• Enthusiasm for Membrane Science and Technology;

• Strong conviction that membranes will help to make a better world.

 

That’s enough for Membrane Memory Lane. Good luck in your future membraning.

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A.G. Tony Fane

UNSW