Summary

NUFiltration Ltd. has taken an unusual idea and turned it into a practical water-purification platform: repurposing sterilized medical-grade hemodialysis filters as high-performance ultrafiltration membranes for water and wastewater applications.

By partnering with Unitronics distributor RDT, NUFiltration successfully implemented a "set-and-forget" Unitronics-based control architecture—a platform that scales seamlessly from small 2 m³/hr units to large 300 m³/hr industrial plants without requiring new programming.

That standardization matters for more than manufacturing efficiency. NUFiltration’s technology has also been deployed in humanitarian and public-health settings in Africa and other non-developed areas, where simple operation, low-pressure filtration, affordability, and reliable water quality can directly affect community resilience. In these environments, the control system must be easy for local operators to understand, simple to support, and stable enough to run with minimal intervention.

The Company

NUFiltration Ltd. is a dynamic global company dedicated to applying its patented NUF® technology to water and wastewater treatment. Their unique approach uses recycled, sterilized medical dialyzers (3.3 nm filtration rate) to create absolute water ultra-filters. This technology effectively retains pathogens, bacteria, suspended solids, and viruses in a single pass without the use of chemicals, providing high-quality purification at a competitive cost.

The Challenge

NUFiltration operates as an OEM machine builder serving a wide range of applications and capacities. That diversity created a familiar automation challenge: every new machine size could easily become a new engineering project if the control platform were not standardized.

The company needed a control system that could:

• Scale without reprogramming: The same core control logic and HMI structure had to support different system capacities, from compact units to large industrial installations.
• Simplify commissioning: Operators and technicians needed a familiar interface and predictable machine behavior across all systems.
• Control pumps, valves, sensors, and air systems: The PLC had to coordinate the electromechanical components involved in automated water inflow, filtration, backwash, and outflow processes.
• Integrate VFD control: Flow and pressure control had to remain precise even when pump and drive sizes changed from project to project.
• Improve support and cost: NUFiltration required better technical support and a stronger price-to-performance ratio than its previous automation supplier could provide.
• Emphasize remote support: NUFiltration required network-device support hardware, interfaced with the PLC, to permit efficient and rapid technical support to the end-user at the site by simply monitoring the system's performances and potential failures from NUF's office
• Support global and humanitarian use cases: The control architecture had to be intuitive enough for diverse operating environments, including sites where local technical resources may be limited.

The Solution

NUFiltration selected Unitronics as the control platform for its systems. The company uses Unitronics Vision700 PLC + HMI controllers with Snap-in I/O modules to combine control, operator interface, and machine I/O in a compact footprint.

The key to the strategy is not only the controller hardware, but the repeatable control philosophy behind it. NUFiltration created a standardized application that can be reused across machines. When a project changes size, the pump and VFD capacity may change, but the control structure remains largely the same.

Control Functions: Programmed in Unitronics All-in-One Software

The Vision700 controller manages the system’s core electromechanical process, including pumps, valves, compressed-air components, analog sensors, digital inputs, and system outputs. The application is programmed in VisiLogic, Unitronics’ software environment for Vision and Samba PLC + HMI controllers, enabling ladder logic, HMI design, hardware configuration, and communications setup within a single development environment.

• Unified ladder logic: The same basic control structure is reused across installations, reducing the need to redesign or revalidate the program for every system size.
• Automated process control: The PLC coordinates inflow, filtration, backwash, pressure control, and outflow to deliver a repeatable purification process.
• VFD-based pump management: The controller communicates with Unitronics VFDs over Modbus, allowing NUFiltration to control water flow and pressure accurately while adapting to different pump sizes.
• Local flexibility with protected standardization: Minor site-specific adjustments can be made where needed, while the core application remains consistent and controlled.

HMI

• Integrated Efficiency: NUFiltration utilizes Unitronics V700 PLC + HMI controllers with a 7” integrated touchscreen. A key advantage of this hardware is the all-in-one design—the PLC and HMI are housed in a single unit, which simplifies panel wiring and saves space.
• Intuitive User Interface: The HMI provides a streamlined, car-dashboard-like experience. This makes the system extremely user-friendly and consistent for operators globally, significantly reducing the learning curve for end-users.

Remote Access & Communications

• Modbus Protocol: enables the PLC to interface with peripheral components such as VFDs. This is central to NUFiltration’s scalability strategy: as system capacity changes, the drive size can change without forcing a fundamental redesign of the PLC program or operator interface.
• Scalability: When a larger system requires a different VFD, only the drive size changes; the PLC peripheral configuration remains identical, maintaining the standardization NUFiltration demands.

Humanitarian Impact: Clean Water Where Simplicity Matters

NUFiltration’s technology is also relevant beyond conventional industrial water treatment. Because the process uses mechanical filtration through medical-grade membranes and can operate at low pressure, it is well suited to projects where clean drinking water is needed but infrastructure, budget, chemicals, and technical support are constrained.

Public reports have connected NUF-based systems with humanitarian drinking-water initiatives, including efforts to support communities during a cholera outbreak in Cameroon, rural water-access projects in Ghana, and a micro water-purification plant in Panama designed to serve vulnerable community residents. These examples reinforce the importance of the engineering choices behind the system: a water-treatment solution intended for difficult environments cannot depend on complicated operation or constant specialist intervention.

In that context, the automation platform becomes part of the humanitarian value proposition. A simple HMI, repeatable logic, stable pump control, and straightforward commissioning make it easier to deploy water-purification systems where they are most needed. For NUFiltration, standardization is therefore not only a production strategy; it is a way to make advanced water purification more accessible, supportable, and scalable.

Benefits / Results

Conclusion

By standardizing on Unitronics control technology with support from RDT, NUFiltration created an automation platform that matches the philosophy of its water-purification technology: simple, efficient, scalable, and practical in the field.

The company can now expand production without rebuilding the control system for every project. Its engineering team can focus on the NUF® membrane technology, while the automation layer provides the repeatability needed for industrial installations, global distribution, and humanitarian drinking-water applications.

For NUFiltration, the result is a control architecture that does more than run a machine. It helps turn an innovative filtration concept into a deployable solution for clean water—whether the customer is an industrial facility, a greenhouse, a wastewater operator, or a community that urgently needs safe drinking water.

“The beauty of this system is that it is simply simple. We did the programming once, and it just works. It is like the control screen in a modern car—user-friendly and reliable. It solved all our requirements, allowing us to maintain the same logic across every machine size we build.”

— Mino Negrin, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, NUFiltration Ltd.