The CCU Rotterdam Challenge: The three most promising solutions

Rotterdam’s innovation ecosystem continues to grow thanks to the City of Rotterdam’s 5th edition of the Unlocked challenge!

This year, Rotterdam Unlocked took the shape of the CCU Rotterdam Challenge, an opportunity for unconventional startups and scaleups to work with the City of Rotterdam and their partners. The challenge’s mission was to reuse the CO² captured in the industrial point sources from the harbour industrial complex of Rotterdam.

This challenge created an ideal opportunity for founders with solutions in the CO² Mineralisation, Power-to-X, and Food & Feed domains to prove themselves and seek potential partnerships with the various partners of this challenge. The matchmaking day consisted of 65 meetings between 15 startups and 14 partners. However, taking into account the partners’ feedback, the following solutions were highlighted:

Food & Feed – Arkeon 

Arkeon’s proprietary technology leverages archaea microorganisms that naturally produce all the building blocks of proteins in only a single fermentation step. The company’s process converts CO2 directly into amino acids and functional peptides, enabling an entirely new world of food products. With a team that comprises world-leading Archaea biologists, process engineers, food scientists and fermentation technologists, the company is on a mission to change food production on a global scale.

Power-to-X – Dioxycle 

Dioxcycle develops a high-performance electrolysis platform to convert industrial carbon emissions into sustainable chemicals and fuel precursors. They adopt a unique fully integrated approach, combining patented innovations at multiple technology levels to develop the most energy and cost-efficient carbon dioxide electrolyser.

Mineralisation – UpCatalyst 

UP Catalyst produces sustainable carbon nanomaterials directly from CO2 or waste biomass for a vast range of applications ranging from green advanced battery technologies to biomedicine. Their technology is based on the transformation of molten salt carbon capture and electrochemical (MSCC-ET), where they electrochemically break the CO2 molecules into pure carbon and oxygen.

Congratulations to the three highlighted startups! We look forward to seeing how your impactful solutions can help Rotterdam become a more circular city!