Germany’s PORELIO raises €2.4 million: industrial wastewater becomes a source of critical metals

Industrial wastewater is generally perceived as a cost: the cost of treatment, environmental compliance and pollution management. This view is beginning to change. As critical metals become more valuable and regulations governing persistent pollutants tighten, industrial effluents are increasingly being seen as reservoirs of untapped resources. This is the premise on which German startup Porelio was built. The company, which has just raised €2.4 million in pre-seed funding, is developing a technology capable of recovering precious metals from industrial waste streams while removing PFAS. Its ambition extends beyond decontamination: to turn wastewater into a new source of raw materials.

The round was led by Portuguese fund Faber, alongside Polytechnique Ventures, Grupo Tecnologica and better ventures. It follows €2.5 million in public funding that enabled the company to develop its technology. The new capital will be used to overcome a more challenging hurdle: moving from scientific demonstration to industrialisation.

Porelio’s bet is based on a simple observation. Precious metals leave production lines every day across numerous industries. Palladium, platinum, rhodium, gold and silver are found in very low concentrations in effluents produced by sectors ranging from semiconductors and chemicals to fuel cells, pharmaceuticals and mining. Individually, these quantities may appear insignificant. At the scale of an industrial site or an entire sector, however, they represent considerable economic losses.

The paradox is well known to manufacturers. These metals can be worth tens of thousands of euros per kilogram, yet recovering them often costs more than allowing them to go to waste. Existing technologies, including activated carbon and ion-exchange resins, lack selectivity or become uneconomical when concentrations are low. As a result, companies spend more to remove these metals than to recover them.

This is precisely the barrier Porelio intends to overcome. FOMS, or Functionalised Ordered Mesoporous Silicas, have been studied in materials chemistry laboratories for almost 30 years. Their structure consists of an extremely regular network of microscopic pores that can be chemically functionalised, allowing them to capture specific molecules or metal ions with great precision while letting the rest of the fluid pass through.

The scientific potential of these materials has long been recognised. Their weakness lay elsewhere. Producing them in a laboratory is relatively straightforward, but manufacturing them at industrial scale with consistent quality and at a cost compatible with industry requirements has until now remained a major challenge.

Porelio’s claimed innovation lies in a patented continuous-flow manufacturing process capable of producing these materials 30 times faster than conventional methods while preserving their capture properties.

Porelio is not solely targeting the precious-metals recovery market. The same technology platform is aimed at a second, rapidly growing market: the removal of PFAS, the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances described as “forever chemicals” because of their extreme chemical stability.

Here again, the choice is strategic. While precious-metals recovery follows an economic rationale, PFAS removal is driven by regulation. As environmental standards tighten, industrial companies will increasingly have to demonstrate their ability to eliminate these persistent molecules from their discharges.

The startup says it has achieved particularly promising results with TFA, an ultra-short-chain compound in the PFAS family regarded as one of the most difficult to remove. According to figures released by the company, its materials capture almost six times more TFA than activated carbon in just five minutes. If this performance is confirmed at scale, it could provide a significant competitive advantage in a market expected to grow substantially over the next decade.

The startup is building an advanced-materials platform whose properties can be adapted to different contaminants or metals by modifying their chemical functionalisation. Today, it is targeting palladium and PFAS. Tomorrow, the same platform could potentially be adapted to other critical metals, rare earth elements or complex molecules.

This platform approach has become one of the models favoured by deeptech investors. A single foundational technology can successively open up several markets without requiring the entire industrial process to be reinvented.

Porelio’s real challenge, however, begins now. With a team of nine, the startup is entering the most difficult phase of its development. The funding will be used to increase production from a few kilograms of material per day to several tonnes a year and convert the pilot projects already conducted in Europe into commercial contracts.

As is often the case with industrial technologies, the principal risks are economic and operational. Manufacturers will adopt a new technology only if it can demonstrate a lower total cost of ownership than existing solutions, a sufficiently long material lifespan, straightforward integration into existing facilities and a clearly measurable return on investment.

Porelio’s founding team is one of its main strengths. The company is led by Rhea Machado, who holds a PhD in chemical process engineering from the Technical University of Berlin and whose research focuses specifically on advanced materials and their industrialisation. She is joined by Chief Technology Officer Javier Silva Mora, a graduate of École Polytechnique and a PhD candidate in chemistry, and Chief Product Officer Nikol Michailidou, a chemical engineer who also trained at the Technical University of Berlin. Now employing nine people, Porelio is entering a new stage of its development in which scientific excellence will have to be matched by industrial and commercial scale-up.