5 Delaware startups fighting the climate crisis

There’s nothing like an exceptionally long, record-breaking heat wave, like the one we’ve been living through in Delaware for weeks now, to bring the impact of climate change home.

We won’t lie: Delaware’s environmental track record is rough in places, most notably the decades of industrial PFLAS contamination.

But its history as a center of chemistry innovation has also led it to become a center of environmental technology today, with Delawareans working hard to fight climate change.

Here are five Delaware startups, initiatives and accelerators that are centered on environmental action.

Ardent researches industrial products to reduce emissions

For the first 30 years of its existence, Ardent was known as Compact Membrane Systems. It rebranded to better reflect its modern product, the company told Technical.ly in March.

Up until around the turn of the century, it was a small company that used federal grants for research and development projects, until it started developing industrial products that capture and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In April, it completed a $3.1 million expansion to more than 15,000 square feet of space that will accommodate 38 new full-time employees.

In 2023, the New Castle-based company raised a $16.5 million Series A and completed the Verbund X accelerator in Vienna, Austria. During that program, Compact Membrane Systems connected with the Austrian petrochemical company OMV, which is now launching a carbon capture pilot rig of their Optiperm decarbonizing platform as it moves toward full commercialization.

New energy-efficient magnets made by CM Materials

2021 EDGE Grant recipient CM Materials, based in the Delaware Innovation Space, was founded by Dr. Aminul Mehedi that same year.

“CM stands for clean magnet,” Mehedi told Technical.ly in 2022.”We are commercializing new magnetic materials for power systems. Long story short, it’s a platform technology which can be used for many, many applications.”

These clean magnets help to create smaller and more efficient components for everything from consumer electronics to industrial applications, cutting down on energy consumption.

Elyte Energy uses hydrogen power to replace fossil fuels

Founded in November 2020 and based on hydrogen storage technology patented by Dr. Jalaal Hayes in 2017, Dover-based Elyte Energy aims to power small and large applications, including vehicles, replacing fossil fuels.

“The beautiful thing about hydrogen is that it’s a clean energy carrier, so it’s like gas that you put in your car,” Hayes said in 2021. “So it’s an energy carrier, meaning it’s a chemical that can turn into electricity. And it’s 100% clean. The byproduct is water vapor.”

Omnipotential Energy Partners makes electric vehicles more accessible

When Cora Castle of Wilmington purchased an electronic vehicle as a city dweller without a garage or driveway, she found that charging it meant taking it to a public charger and waiting more than two hours.

After some research, she found that the issue was even worse than she thought.

“I realized that half of the people who live in the United States simply can’t conveniently own an electric vehicle because they parked their cars on the street at night,” Castle told Technical.ly in 2023.

Castle developed the CurbStar curbside EV charger and helped legislate state policy to allow residents to apply for a permit to install chargers on residential streets. That legislation went into effect this month.

Versogen creates carbon-neutral hydrogen power

We first got to know Versogen as W7Energy, a startup out of the University of Delaware founded by Yushan Yan. The startup’s mission has always been to lower carbon emissions globally with its electrolyzers designed to create zero-emission green hydrogen.

Versogen takes on an environmental issue with hydrogen power, Versogen previously told Technical.ly. Although hydrogen power itself is clean, creating hydrogen is not carbon neutral. This fact created a need for green hydrogen created without outputting carbon. Versogen developed an electrolyzer that creates green hydrogen at scale to then be used for hydrogen-powered vehicles and industrial uses.

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