At a glance
Publicly launched: 2024
Headquarters: Houston
Technology: Electrochemical reactor that produces hydrogen peroxide and one-to-two-carbon chemicals on-site
Founders: Ryan DuChanois, Haotian Wang, and Yang Xia
Funding or notable partners: $2.5 million from investors including New Climate Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Ecosphere Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Echo River Capital, and Safar Partners; a $1.6 million small business grant from the US National Science Foundation
Industrial thermochemistry is a formidable foe. Many clever laboratory processes that transform sustainable feedstocks into valuable chemicals have fallen flat because they couldn’t compete with the scale and decades-long optimization of conventional chemical production.
The electrochemistry start-up Solidec is targeting a gap in the chemical industry’s armor: the high costs of purification, distribution, and storage. The company’s trick is on-site production of simple molecules such as hydrogen peroxide, formates, acetates, and syngas. The firm says it can do this with modular equipment that needs only water, air, salt, electricity, and carbon dioxide. This approach would reduce the cost of transporting both feedstocks and products.
