15 March 2022

Deasyl: innovative solutions that advance green chemistry and meet environmental challenges

Established in 2017, Deasyl SA develops innovative Swiss-made technologies that are opening up new possibilities in organic chemistry. Today, this petrochemicals and fine-chemicals company boasts an impressive portfolio of patents.

From the word go, Deasyl SA has sought to create public and private partnerships far and wide, including with Chimie ParisTech – PSL, the University of Málaga, Polytechnique Montréal and the Swiss groups WAB and Helvetia Environnement. The technologies developed by this fledgling company are based on environmentally friendly processes that are innovative, green and less costly.

Deasyl’s technological solutions include ways of recycling waste vegetable oils at local level. The company is also developing innovative processes to recycle glycerol, a co-product of the transesterification reaction. The company’s mission is to use its research and development expertise and its open-innovation collaborative model to develop groundbreaking solutions.

Recently, Deasyl was awarded CHF 2.5 million of non-dilutive funding by Innosuisse to launch a pilot line for an industrial process to produce high-added-value biodiesel. “We’re delighted to have been given this Swiss public funding and we’re working really hard on validating our industrial pilot production process and identifying our first customers,” says Julien Thiel, CEO of the Geneva-based start-up. “We’re in line to receive additional funding to accelerate and broaden our R&D activities and start scaling up one of our most promising patents, Solketal, a petrochemicals additive with an estimated market value of several billion dollars.”

Technology unveiled at the International Symposium of Green Chemistry (ISGC) Presented in a world premiere at the ISGC in La Rochelle in May 2019, Deasyl’s technology is now recognised as the first mechanosynthesis technology that can be used in situ at temperature. Julien Thiel underlines the fact that “small installations do not generate additional operational costs,” an advantage that gives Deasyl a competitive edge in the sector.

Deasyl has plenty in store for 2022. It is currently pursuing a project to develop a new generation of reactor with induction heating. The process it has developed could also be used more widely on an industrial scale. Lastly, Deasyl is hoping to offer its customers a mechanical reactor with heating that limits energy loss – just one of several ambitious sustainable chemistry projects it has in the pipeline.