How Sunchem turns waste into gold (literally)

As a follow up from our critical minerals deep dive, I was excited to interview Dana, the CTO of Sunchem, who shared how their new Nano Filter technology and novel leaching formulations allow them to retrieve valuable critical minerals from waste streams, starting with gold.

Read on to learn more about:

💰 The status quote of recycling today and how their process is dramatically cheaper

⚡ Why their technology is a breakthrough

📍 The markets they are considering and tackling

📈 How they already designed for scale-up in mind

💸 Their amazing unit economics and business model

🤝 Where they are in technology development and customer engagements

👏 Plus details on their upcoming seed round… VCs read up!

🏢 Psst: once closed, they’re on the lookout for their first business hire

The job market is heating up this year compared to last year! I’ve been getting notified by folks in my network trying to hire for their climate teams and made many introductions to Steven at Propeller VC. I’d like to do this at scale. If you’re recruiting, looking for potential co-founders, or simply wanting to meet other folks in climate technology, please fill out this form here.

The founders' origin story

After earning his PhD in chemistry, Daniel founded Sunchem in 2020 based on his five to seven years of research beginning at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His work focused on a unique class of materials with extraordinarily high surface areas. To put this into perspective, just one gram of these materials can possess an internal surface area equivalent to a football field. This remarkable characteristic opened up new possibilities for applications in areas like gas absorption and lead capture.

As the technology matured, Daniel recognized the need for an engineer to help scale up the processes and design devices that could integrate these materials into industrially relevant systems that can go from bench scale to commercial scale. Dana joined the team in 2022 after earning her PhD from UC Berkeley in Environmental Engineering where she brings complementary research experience in filtering out contaminants from groundwater. Together, Daniel and Dana have the background to develop unique formulations and materials that can filter out materials - whether this is filtering out gold from e-waste or extracting copper from mining inputs.

The status quote of technologies… and why Sunchem’s approach is better

Battery recycling can be expensive and capex intensive. The broader recycling technologies available are no different. Here’s a summary of what I learned, and why Sunchem’s approach is dramatically better: higher yield, lower operating costs, and safer to operate.

Why their technology is a breakthrough

Metal organic frameworks are a special type of material that scientists have been studying for decades. Imagine them as tiny, sponge-like structures made of metal pieces connected by organic (carbon-based) links. These structures have lots of tiny pores, like a honeycomb.

Scientists have found a way to "tune" these MOFs by adding polymers (long chains of molecules) into their structure. This is like painting the inside of the tiny pores with a special coating. By carefully choosing the right polymer coating, they can make the MOF attract specific metals, like gold, while ignoring other materials. It's like creating a magnet that only picks up gold and leaves everything else behind.

This method can be adapted to target different metals by changing the polymer coating. It's like having a universal key that can be quickly modified to open different locks. Sunchem has patented this method of "painting the pores" for a range of metals which gives them a significant business advantage.

The markets they are considering and tackling

Their beachhead market is e-waste given the size and growth of this waste stream. However, their technology can be applied to extracting valuable metals from discarded solar panels, large mining waste heaps, and more. Daniel built out a library of materials they could work with during his PhD, and tuning a new selective material can take less than a year. As part of the first Rio Tinto and Founders Factory Mining Tech Accelerator, they were also able to better understand the mining market, customer needs, and how to commercialize in that space in the future.

Their amazing unit economics and business model

Depending on the market segment, they are considering different business models. In the electronic waste sector, they will either have a revenue share model with e-waste provided by their recycling partners or have a purchasing agreement in place initially. With their seed fundraise, their goal is to build, own, and operate their facility and sell the gold they recover.

Because of the high value of gold, their process costs are orders of magnitude lower. Based on their lab results, they project 20% profit margins in their first pilot at their facility, with improved margins as the process scales.

How they already designed for scale up in mind

Everything in their system is available off the shelf and uses widely available inputs. The system is modular too and once proven at a pilot scale, they can scale up efficiently. It’s always great when startups design for this from the start 🙂

How to get involved

They are fundraising $3.5M for their seed round to build and operate their pilot facility and are seeking introductions to investors. Please e-mail thegigaton@gmail.com with your work email, and I will consider introducing you to them!

After the seed round, they will look for their first business hire. They’re open to folks working part-time and ramping up to full-time. Please e-mail thegigaton@gmail.com with your blurb, and I will consider introducing you to them!

What gives her hope on the climate crisis

It fuels her personally to meet all the different founders working in the climate technology space. It is exciting to see many impactful, innovative technologies getting commercialized outside of the lab, and the range of opportunities to support those efforts from grants to accelerator programs. Through these programs and conferences, she has met such bright teams working hard to tackle different parts of the space.