See Chemfinity in Promising Prototypes to Watch in 2025
Chemfinity Technologies, Inc. made our list of Promising Prototypes to Watch in 2023 with their highly selective membranes and adsorbent “nano-sponges”—materials designed to filter pollutants and recover valuable resources. A year later, the Brooklyn (USA)-based startup is refining its technology and moving toward commercialization.
Now the UC Berkeley spin-off has secured four U.S. Small Business Innovation Grants in the past year, including a January 2025 award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to support mine drainage purification. The company is testing its materials in applications ranging from e-waste recycling and catalytic converter recovery to water desalination and pollution mitigation in the Amazon’s gold mining industry.
“We’ve developed materials that can selectively recover over 20 different elements,” Chemfinity’s co-founder Adam Uliana told Engineering for Change.
The materials are porous polymer sorbents that selectively extract metals and other elements from liquids and gases. Chemfinity produces its materials in two forms: sorbent beads, which function like a Brita filter but target specific metals, and membranes that purify water while simultaneously capturing valuable metals.
When we first discovered Chemfinity, they were developing a membrane to clean up artisanal gold mining operations and they won an award in Conservation X Labs Artisanal Mining Grand Challenge: The Amazon.
“Miners can use our ecofriendly membranes to replace mercury and recover the gold they need to support their families,” Uliana says.
The company still has sights on mining while it is expanding into other applications.
“We’re focused on recovering critical metals from waste sources such as electronics, catalytic converters, wastewaters, and other industrial wastes as our beachhead, focusing first on precious metals like platinum-group metals and gold,” Uliana says.
As the company scales up production and moves closer to commercial deployment, it’s looking for partners to help implement its technology. Particularly partners with feedstock supplies or metal offtakes, Uliana says.
With ongoing field tests and industry collaborations, Chemfinity is moving beyond the prototype stage and into real-world impact.
Tuned sorbent beads loaded with different metals. Photo: Adam Uliana / Chemfinity
