UniSieve raises capital for membrane platform

The Zurich-based CleanTech start-up UniSieve has raised a total of 4.6 million US dollars after closing a successful financing round. This was led by the Swiss venture capital fund Wingman Ventures, as detailed in an article published on startupticker.ch. Additional capital inflows came from the Green Deal Grant of the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the Climate-KIC initiative from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

UniSieve was founded in 2018 and is headquartered at the Institute for Chemical and Bio-Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). The company is focused on sustainability and supports enterprises active in the chemicals and energy industries to save energy and reduce waste. As the article states, UniSieve now intends to establish pilot production and co-finance industrial testing at its customers’ chemical sites.

The membranes developed by UniSieve facilitates savings of up to 90% of the energy required to purify the world’s most frequent chemical feedstocks. In this context, customers are able to substantially cut greenhouse gas pollution, recover valuable chemicals and reduce operational costs. Furthermore, its highly efficient separation technologies increase the economic appeal and sustainability of the growing renewable chemicals market.

“With UniSieve, we back a highly innovative platform technology which optimizes the production process of the world’s largest chemical feedstocks by significantly reducing the amount of energy used in the process”, comments Lukas Weder from Wingman Ventures on his company’s investment in UniSieve. He adds: “We truly believe the UniSieve team can significantly contribute to the net-zero economy”.

In the Innosuisse coaching program, UniSieve is using its membrane platform to develop the treatment of oxygen in artificial air. This should help people with Covid-19-related shortness of breath.