Pioneering the future of materials extraction

Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) Solutions Programme-supported spinout SiTration is poised to disrupt multiple industries with its novel materials extraction process. MIT News speaks with the startup's co-founders, Jeffrey Grossman and Brendan Smith, about the applications and implications of their breakthrough technology - a silicon membrane capable of extracting and recovering various critical materials - and their journey from research to commercialisation, following a seed funding round led by venture capital firm 2150, which raised USD 11.8 million.

Brendan explains the technology's application across manufacturing and clean energy industries, telling MIT News: "We can produce membranes with pore sizes from the molecular scale up to the size of a human hair in diameter, and everything in between. Combined with the ability to electrify the membrane and separate based on a material’s electrochemical properties, this tunability allows us to target a vast array of different operations and separation applications across industrial fields."

On his role in the startup, he adds: "What’s most fun to me about being a CEO of an early-stage startup is that there are 100 different factors, most people-oriented, that you have to navigate every day. Each stakeholder has different motivations and objectives. And you basically try to fit that all together, to create value for our partners and customers, the company and for society. You start with just an idea, and you have to keep leveraging that to form a more and more tangible product, to multiply and progress commercial relationships, and do it all at an ever-expanding scale."