Micropollutant capture receives EC grant
13 Mar 2018 by Evoluted New Media
Biomaterial company, CustoMem, has received a European grant for its novel material – designed to capture micro-pollutants from wastewater.
The award of £1.24m will enable the company to bring its granular media, optimised to capture and recycle specific challenging micropollutants found in industrial wastewater, to market.
“This is a game-changing grant for us,” explained CustoMem CEO Henrik Hagemann. “Our products’ superior performance and cost-effectiveness have been validated in our laboratory and initial trials with clients. This grant enables us to scale up to industrial pilot trials of greater than 100 m3/day flow rates.”
The award is funded through the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument, part of the European Innovation Council, supporting top class innovators and entrepreneurs. Horizon 2020 offers funding and additional support for breakthrough ideas with the potential to create new markets or revolutionise existing ones.
CustoMem, based at the Imperial College Innovation Hub in London, has combined its expertise in biomaterials and synthetic biology to create CGM (CustoMem Granular Media). This novel bio-adsorbent can selectively capture micropollutants, like Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs) from wastewater in standard steel tank processing equipment that provides significant cost savings to customers compared with traditional adsorbent materials like anion-exchange media and granular activated carbon.
