Industries around the world are facing growing pressure to reduce pollution, recover valuable resources, and improve the sustainability of manufacturing processes. At the same time, regulators are tightening standards around contaminants such as PFAS chemicals while companies search for more efficient ways to recover precious metals from industrial waste streams. Although advanced material technologies have shown significant promise in laboratory research for many years, scaling them for large industrial applications has remained a major challenge. Germany based deeptech startup Porelio is working to bridge that gap through a new manufacturing approach, and the company has now secured fresh funding to accelerate commercial development.
Porelio has raised €2.4 million in an oversubscribed pre seed funding round led by Faber, with participation from Polytechnique Ventures, Grupo Tecnológica, and better ventures.
The investment will support continued technology development, manufacturing scale up, and commercial expansion across industrial separation and water treatment markets.
Transforming Industrial Separation Technology
Founded in 2025, Porelio develops advanced materials designed to selectively capture valuable or harmful substances from industrial liquids.
Its technology focuses on recovering precious metals from industrial effluents while removing persistent PFAS contaminants from water supplies.
At the core of the platform are Functionalized Ordered Mesoporous Silicas, specialised materials engineered to attract specific molecules while allowing the remaining liquid to flow through.
This selective separation capability enables more efficient purification processes while supporting valuable resource recovery.
Solving a Long Standing Manufacturing Challenge
Although Functionalized Ordered Mesoporous Silicas have attracted scientific interest for decades, large scale production has remained a significant obstacle.
Porelio has developed a patented continuous flow manufacturing process designed to overcome this limitation.
According to the company, its production method operates approximately thirty times faster than conventional manufacturing techniques while using more sustainable processing conditions.
The technology enables industrial scale production while maintaining the material properties required for advanced separation applications.
The company believes scalable manufacturing is essential for bringing these materials from laboratory research into commercial deployment.
Recovering Valuable Resources and Removing PFAS
Porelio’s materials have been developed to address two major industrial challenges simultaneously.
The first involves recovering precious metals such as palladium from industrial waste streams, allowing manufacturers to improve resource efficiency while reducing losses.
The second focuses on removing highly persistent PFAS compounds from contaminated water.
During proof of concept testing across Europe, the company’s materials demonstrated significantly faster palladium capture than conventional adsorption technologies.
The platform also achieved stronger removal of trifluoroacetic acid, one of the most persistent PFAS chemicals, compared with commercially available activated carbon under similar testing conditions.
Advancing Sustainable Industrial Processes
An additional advantage of Porelio’s technology is material regeneration.
Instead of requiring complete replacement after use, the company’s separation materials can be regenerated for repeated operation.
This capability has the potential to reduce treatment costs while lowering resource consumption and improving the sustainability of industrial water treatment systems.
The company believes regenerative advanced materials can help industries meet increasingly demanding environmental standards while improving operational efficiency.
Scaling Towards Commercial Deployment
The newly secured funding will enable Porelio to increase manufacturing capacity from pilot scale production measured in kilograms per day to industrial output measured in tonnes annually.
The company also plans to convert existing proof of concept collaborations into long term commercial partnerships with industrial customers across Europe.
As demand continues growing for cleaner industrial processes, resource recovery, and advanced water treatment technologies, scalable material innovations are becoming increasingly important. By combining patented manufacturing processes with highly selective separation materials, Porelio aims to improve industrial sustainability while addressing some of the world’s most pressing environmental and resource management challenges.