Two startups with big solutions for saving energy and hospital time receive CHF 130,000 each

11.09.2018

UniSieve and EBA Med win Venture Kick stage 3. ETH Zürich spin-off UniSieve develops a patent-pending membrane technology allowing for a cost- and energy-efficient separation of gases. EBA Med offers a non-invasive solution to treat heart arrhythmias.

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UniSieve
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EBA Med
How can one reduce carbon emissions from industrial production? Improving the efficiency of separation processes, such as the purification of gases and fluids, is one approach. Together, all these processes account for over 10% of worldwide energy consumption. Startup UniSieve of ETH Zurich has developed a patent-pending membrane technology, which allows cost- and energy-efficient separation of gases and fluids. It is based on an inventive way of integrating metal-organic frameworks (MOF) into polymeric membranes. The UniSieve platform technology could revolutionize the separation market, slashing energy requirements by up to 90% and saving millions of tons of carbon emissions a year. UniSieve now focusses on cleantech applications such as the optimization of the purification of propylene, the second most used chemical building stone worldwide, and the efficient preconcentration of energy gases.
 
Heart arrhythmias are disruptions in the normal heartbeat and affect around 15 million people in Europe and North America alone. As the population ages, this number is expected to double in the next 50 years. Today, heart arrhythmias are treated with an invasive manual surgery requiring several hours’ intervention via catheter from specialized staff, resulting in large costs. EBA Med now presents a solution that combines medical devices for proton therapy, motion tracking imaging and software to enable the treatment of patients in a non-invasive way, in a single out-patient session. This saves hospitals five times the time at a competitive cost.
 
“We are grateful to Venture Kick for its intense pitching and Q&A sessions with competent jury members, its concrete and constructive Kicker Camps and its financial support,” says Adriano Garonna, co-founder of EBA Med. “The Venture Kick process has allowed us to ask the right questions and address them. We can only recommend it to other startups!”
 
Samuel Hess, CEO and co-founder of UniSieve, explains: “Venture Kick boosted the UniSieve business case development. The Venture Kick multistep program allowed us to set productive milestones and structure our company planning.”

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