EIT Climate-KIC supported UniSieve unlocks decarbonising opportunity for heavy industry as it lands €5 million seed funding round

UniSieve announced last week that it has raised over €5 million from a venture capital consortium including the Amadeus APEX Technology Fund, Wingman Ventures, Ciech Ventures and Zürcher Kantonalbank. The EIT Climate-KIC portfolio company based in Switzerland provides advanced molecular separation membrane solutions for a wide variety of applications.

Heavy industries such as transportation, construction and chemical sectors are among the highest carbon-emitting sources because producing materials like steel and cement require vast quantities of energy. To achieve deep emissions reductions in heavy industry, innovation in current process technology is required.

UniSieve is addressing this significant energy drain while helping these industries get closer to achieving Net Zero goals. The membrane-based separation solutions can separate chemicals, energy carriers, or CO2 from flue gas based on size exclusion. It bypasses the needs for heating or cooling through sieving membranes that can reduce the energy needed for separating and purifying molecules by up to 90 per cent.

UniSieve stands for “universal sieving.” By applying its separation solutions, customers save energy, reduce emissions and increase product recovery. The amount raised will be used to pilot and expand production capacities.

Samuel Hess, co-founder and CEO of UniSieve commented: “The concept of sieving works as simple as a coffee filter holding back the coffee powder from an espresso. However, it gets a little tricky when separating chemicals that vary in size by a fraction of an angstrom only (1 angstrom equals one-tenth of a nanometer). To do so, the sieve must be extremely narrow and precise. The UniSieve membrane is structure made of highly ordered network of porous crystals that generate in a repeating pattern, much like ancient Roman mosaics.”  

The concept of combining molecular sieves with a support layer to create the perfect membrane has been available for decades, but it has never scaled into broad, commercially applicable membranes. Therefore, the UniSieve Team chose to focus on economic scalability when creating its membrane platform technology. 

Hess added, “We have run pilot testing with industry leaders which have demonstrated that the separation solution works. Today, we have several contracts signed and under negotiation to pilot our membranes in a variety of applications.” 

UniSieve was established in 2018 by university class fellows Samuel Hess and Elia Schneider. Whilst studying at ETH Zürich, they discovered the means to manufacture and integrate porous crystals (zeolitic materials) into polymeric membranes.  

In 2019, UniSieve joined EIT Climate-KIC’s Accelerator programme, completing Stages 1 and 2 of the process and receiving a total of €45,000 in financial support. These stages allow start-ups to refine and develop their business model and focus on customer traction. Hess agrees: “The ClimAccelerator supported UniSieve in sharpening our impact vision by providing several high-value workshops.” 

UniSieve was also one of nine climate ventures that EIT Climate-KIC invested in to help with the recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. The €420,000 award supported their efforts to scale essential innovations to contribute to the fight against climate change.