Success stories

Oorja
Oorja is a 'Farming as a Service' social enterprise company working at the intersection of sustainable agriculture and clean energy. They provide solar-powered irrigation, milling and cooling services to smallholder farmers on a pay-per-use basis. They recently built their 100th mini-grid.

Launched in 2016, the company has received a number of awards for its work on energy access, sustainable agriculture, and climate action.

In March 2023, Oorja won the Startup Transition Award in the Quality Energy Access and SDG-7 category and the Mercom India Award for the Best Off-grid Project.

Oorja was shortlisted for the Renewable Transition Challenge, Ashden Award for Powering Agriculture and were also nominated for the Earthshot Prize. They were selected for the Google Startups for Sustainable Development Program and the DCM Shriram AgWater Challenge.

Oorja was also awarded the Echoing Green Transformational Follow-on Funding in 2023. Its co-founder, Dr. Clementine Chambon, was selected as a changemaker by The Global Good Fund.

Lixea
Lixea is a revolutionary technology that turns the vast global agricultural and wood waste into profitable, sustainable materials and fuels.

A technology licensing company that spun out from Imperial College London in 2017, Lixea’s environmentally friendly waste biomass processing technology uses a unique green solvent called ionic liquid. The novel, patented process takes any type of woody materials that would end up in landfill or would be burnt, including forestry/timber waste, agri residues, such as wheat straw, sugarcane bagasse, rice straw along with metal contaminated construction waste wood and separates its components - cellulose fibres, lignin and valuable molecules from the hemicellulose part. These high-quality materials can be then converted into products, including packaging, fine and bulk biobased chemicals, bioplastics and biofuels using further chemical, biological and/or mechanical processing.

The technology has the potential to serve many different markets and become a platform technology enabling the implementation of a true circular bioeconomy.

In the last 4 years, Lixea have engaged with over 150 companies around the world and introduced biobased building blocks in various established and novel material formulations. 

Their pilot scale process in Bäckhammar, Sweden has been operational for over 2 years now, producing materials for prototyping and product development at kg scale.

Currently, Lixea are working towards the design and building of a 25,000 tonne / year demonstration plant in Central Europe with key industry partners with the anticipation to further expand our operations in South & North America, South Africa, and Asia in the coming years. 

SolarFlow
Launched in 2017, Solar Flow was the IChemE Global Award winner in 2018 and shortlisted for 2018 Energy Institute ‘Innovative Technology’ Award.

Inspired by designs that appear in nature, Solar Flow is developing a solar panel that can simultaneously generate electricity, clean desalinated water and heat all from the same area, with a total efficiency 3-4 times that of conventional PV panels and no need for secondary components.

The technology can be used in applications and settings where it is desirable to generate electricity with high efficiency, much like PV panels, but also where clean, desalinated water is needed for various purposes. The spinout is presently running long-term demonstration projects in different climates.

Exactmer
Founded in 2018, Exactmer develops a cutting edge technology platform for the synthesis of biopolymers and synthetic polymers in liquid phase.

This innovative technology facilitates the synthesis and separation of molecules via nanofiltration, leveraging size and shape to achieve high efficiency. It enables the isolation of highly pure and specific molecular components with exceptional accuracy and scalability. It is the winner of several grants including from Innovate UK and the European Innovation Council (EIC).

Nanomox
Nanomox pioneers advanced metal processing and inorganic material production through innovative use of ionic solvents. Its technology, grounded in green chemistry principles, substantially reduces energy consumption and CO2 emissions compared to traditional methods. Specializing in recovering metals like zinc from industrial residues and ores, Nanomox aims to transform waste processing into high-value products.

Its flagship material, Nanomox® Zinc Oxide, is highly versatile with applications across cosmetics, ceramics, semiconductors, rubber compounding, and tyre manufacturing.

It also serves critical roles in batteries, solar panels, and other advanced technologies. Nanomox's technology is a scalable platform poised to expand beyond zinc-based materials to include titanium, rare earth elements (REE), copper, magnesium, and other metal-based materials in the future.

With a steadfast commitment to sustainability and circular economy practices, Nanomox leads in developing efficient, low-carbon solutions for global markets.

Quaisr
Founded in 2020, this is an Imperial College London and Alan Turing Institute spin-out with the aim to revolutionise modelling and simulation efforts across multinationals.

Today, the Quaisr platform delivers digital connectivity infrastructure across defence, pharmaceutical and FMCG companies, helping engineers and scientists scale simulation-backed AI workflows to mission-critical operational deployments, helping engineers to solve pressing problems in design, monitoring, optimisation and control.

Quaisr is VC-backed and has raised $3.1 million to date in addition to over $0.5 million in grant funding. It currently has 10 full-time employees.

CO2CO
A 2021 startup focused on atmospheric carbon dioxide removal as part of the global drive to address climate change, CO2CO is focused on the thermal transformation of biological waste material to decarbonise the transport, construction, and energy industry sectors.

DyeRecycle
Launched in 2022 with a unique technology that gives dyes and colours a second chance using green chemistry. It enables circularity in the fashion and textile industry by solving two of the greatest challenges facing the industry: dye pollution and textile waste.

The service life of dyestuff is extended to colour a new garment, while high-quality dye-free textile fibers are similarly recovered. The spinout has received a number of awards and accolades and funding including the Global Change Award from the H&M Foundation, and is well set for making a major contribution to sustainability of the sector.
Coverage:
Chemical Engineer
Fashion for Good Global Innovation Programme

Bioataraxis
Launched in 2023, Bioataraxis is developing a new process called Ecosaf to produce bio-based surfactants from waste biomass. These surfactants will be used in cleaning products with the ultimate goal of decarbonizing the cleaning industry which today is heavily fossil fuel based (emitting over 50 Million tons of CO2 per year).

The Ecosaf process creates surfactants with high detergency, comparable to their petrochemical counterparts.

In April 2024, the company completed the technology development by scaling up the process to a pilot scale of 200 kg/day and established key partnerships throughout the supply chain to ensure a further scale-up to 4,000 tons/year.

Bioataraxis has now opened a seed round to launch the product in the market. The company has secured £1.3 million in a pre-seed round and is participating in an R&D partnership with Shell through the Shell GameChanger program.

SOLVE
Incorporated in April 2024 out of collaborative research between Imperial and BASF, SOLVE enables optimal chemical process condition selection in the agrochemical and pharmaceutical industries. SOLVE twins efficient empirical data collection with machine learning to provide efficient solutions to chemical process problems. The spinout already has a revenue generating project in the agrochemical space, recently completed a £780k pre-seed round and is currently hiring an interdisciplinary Machine Learning, Chemistry, and Chemical Engineering team.
Press release

Student companies (launched by students without Imperial IP):

Aquabattery (launched 2014)
Revolutionary technology delivers large-scale energy storage that is affordable, sustainable and completely safe, by storing energy in just table salt and water.

p.Happi (launched 2019)
First of its kind natural serum that uses a natural good bacterium to protect and re-establish your intimate microbiome by offering a new mechanism of action over current solutions.

• Process Systems Enterprise (PSE, Simulation software and services for the process industry). Winner of the 2008 MacRobert Award, the top prize of the Royal Academy of Engineering for profitable innovation, a Queen Award for Industry and IChemE Global Awards 2020 finalist, it served clients from worldwide offices. Founded in 1997, it was sold to Siemens in 2018 and integrated into the Process Automation Business Unit of Siemens Digital Industries. At the time it had with 170 employees. This was the largest Imperial exit realization in the last 25 years, and one of the top 10 in the UK in the last 11 years. 
  
  
• Membrane Extraction Technology (MET, Organic Solvent Nanofiltration). Also founded in 1997, it was sold to Evonik in 2010 in a trade sale. Its founder, Prof A. Livingston, was awarded the 2009 Silver Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering “…to recognize an outstanding and demonstrated personal contribution to British engineering, which has resulted in successful market exploitation…”
  
  
• Fabrican a spinout company that caught the extensive media attention (Press release). Its Spray-on fabric © creates an instant sprayable non-woven fabric from a can. A viral fashion moment was born during Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week on September 2022, when Fabrican founder and Managing Director, Dr. Manel Torres sprayed a dress on the skin of topmodel, Bella Hadid as the finale of Paris fashion house Coperni’s runway show.
  
  
• Hexxcell launched in 2011 but operational from 2013, combines Artificial Intelligence (AI) with physics-based models and deep domain knowledge into digital twins used for Design, Advanced Monitoring, Predictive Analytics and Prescriptive Maintenance of Industrial Heat Transfer Systems. Has top clients in the energy industries.

We have a range of companies in the pipeline. They do not have an associated website but each one has a Technology Datasheet, which can be obtained by emailing Geethanjali Bathina. 

2D Nano
2D Nano is a company manufacturing graphene, other 2-dimensional materials (2D), e.g., boron nitride, molybdenum disulfide, etc., and their subsequent chemical formulations with primary applications in sustainable concrete and energy storage. 2D Nano is also expanding its operations into sustainable composites, coatings and conductive inks. Our company deploys own key patented technologies that permits to conduct quality assurance in real-time and manufacture 2D materials at tonnage scale to the required specifications yielding minimal disruption to our industrial partners’ production chain whilst offering highly competitive and sustainable solutions.

 Advanced Peptide Technologies and Orthogonal Peptides
Advanced Peptide Technologies and Orthogonal Peptides are two new technology companies being spun out from Imperial. Advanced Peptide Technologies has two major technology developments for the improved manufacture of peptide therapeutic drugs. Whilst Orthogonal Peptides is a platform technology company which has unique (patent pending) method for peptide synthesis, which is a major advance on current synthesis approaches. It is especially powerful way to create new peptide drugs which are in cyclic forms which are essential for oral drug delivery.

Orthogonal Peptides were awarded the 2024 Emerging Tech Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

AlphaVectors Biotechnologies
Ground-breaking Lipid Nanoparticles, patented for efficient delivery of RNA-based vaccines and therapeutics, offer long-term stability at ambient temperatures, eliminating the need for costly cold-chain storage. This innovation ensures high efficacy for at least 12 months, whether in aqueous or powder form, even in tropical climates reaching up to 40°C. With a validation study underway with a world-leading pharmaceutical company, our spinout aims to license-out and co-develop our technologies with RNA vaccines and therapeutics developers.

ElectroPET
This novel technology can upcycle polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic waste into high-quality building block terephthalic acid (TPA) while co-generating green hydrogen. The technology comprises a prototype and process to achieve full conversion of plastic waste with > 95% yield to terephthalic acid, and generates hydrogen with 50% less electricity consumption than the state-of-the-art water electrolyser technology. The high purity terephthalic acid can be reused to produce virgin PET plastic, and the clean H2 can be used as reactant or high energy carrier in chemical industry to help in decarbonising the sector.

FlexDesign
An upcoming software-based startup developing a software package with a user-friendly GUI to accelerate process development and reduce wet-lab experimentation of novel materials in manufacturing. FlexDesign software enables complex integrated analysis of design decisions and operating conditions with no expert knowledge required. The software is capable of extracting rich information directly from data with no model required. Critically, it provides information on process flexibility against variations in materials and operating conditions. This promises to accelerate process development and minimise wet-lab experimentation by indicating the most prominent candidate designs. We are currently working with partners to demonstrate the prototype in an industrial environment (TRL6).

RemePhy Technologies (formerly PhytoMines)
RemePhy Technologies is an early-stage phytoremediation startup developing metal-hyperaccumulating plants in order to purify contaminated soils from heavy metals. Due to our innovative plant-bacterial system, our plants are able to accumulate multiple metal variants up to 17X more than regular plant types. This enables RemePhy Technologies not only to be another phytoremediation company but also to recycle multiple metals simultaneously. We also aim to recycle the produced biomass, offering a sustainable solution for contaminated land purification by combining phytoremediation with heavy metal recycling.

Sangcyte Therapeutics
Our company sets out provide a targeted drug delivery system that can enhance medicine to successfully remove blood clots. We have carefully designed nanoparticles that use the membranes of red blood cells as the starting material and have included a targeting component to ensure direct delivery of the chosen medicine. We are currently putting together a preclinical data package including several in vivo studies showing the nanoparticles safety and efficacy. We are looking for grants and pre-seed funding to push towards clinical trials.   

Sodian
Developing and manufacturing high performance carbon materials for anodes in sodium-ion batteries, sustainably grown from bio-sources. The sodium-ion anode market is forecast to reach $5bn by 2035 requiring 350kt carbon anode material.

Vanadion
At Vanadion, we provide the knowledge of vanadium refining to ultra-high purities while keeping costs minimal, thanks to our unique solvent for its considerable selectivity towards vanadium, and to our simple and scalable process. By reducing the production costs while providing ultra-high purity vanadium, we can significantly reduce the costs of vanadium redox flow batteries, systems which are strictly vital for clean energy transition.