Porelio secures €2.4M to scale industrial water treatment materials

Porelio, a Germany-based deeptech startup developing advanced materials for industrial separation and water treatment, has raised €2.4 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round. The investment was led by Faber, with participation from Polytechnique Ventures, Grupo Tecnológica and better ventures.

Founded in 2025, Porelio is developing advanced materials designed to recover precious metals from industrial effluents and remove persistent PFAS chemicals from water. The company's technology is based on Functionalized Ordered Mesoporous Silicas (FOMS), a class of materials that selectively capture targeted molecules while allowing the remaining liquid to pass through.

The company's key innovation is a patented continuous-flow manufacturing process that enables FOMS to be produced at industrial scale. According to Porelio, the process is around 30 times faster than conventional production methods while operating under more sustainable conditions. The materials can also be regenerated, potentially reducing the cost of water and industrial effluent treatment.

Porelio says its technology has demonstrated promising results in proof-of-concept projects across Europe. In testing, its materials captured palladium around six times faster than conventional adsorption technologies and removed significantly more trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), one of the most persistent PFAS compounds, than commercial activated carbon under comparable conditions.

This chemistry has sat on laboratory benches for thirty years. Everyone could see its potential; no one had made it at the scale that matters. A material that works by the gram cannot clean a contaminated water supply nor recover the metal lost in an industrial stream. We solved the scale, so it can finally do that work,

said Dr Rhea Machado, CEO and co-founder of Porelio.

The fresh capital will be used to accelerate technology development and scale production of the company's FOMS materials from pilot-scale manufacturing measured in kilograms per day to industrial production measured in tonnes per year.

Porelio also plans to convert its existing industrial collaborations into commercial partnerships following several successful proof-of-concept projects across Europe.