Daphne Technology's EIC Accelerator Bet on Ship Exhaust, Revisited

On 1 January 2020 the world's ships had to cut the sulphur in their fuel from 3.5% to 0.5%, or clean their exhaust instead, under the rule known as IMO 2020, according to the International Maritime Organization. Daphne Technology, a young spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), had a cleaner answer than the scrubbers then flooding the market: a system that would strip sulphur and nitrogen oxides from the exhaust and turn them into fertiliser, with nothing discharged into the sea.

The European Commission's list of winners of the 9 October 2019 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot names Daphne Technology SA of Ecublens, grant only, for SulPure. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,433,898.25 towards a total cost of €3,476,997.50 for the project, which ran from 1 March 2020 to 31 December 2022, according to the CORDIS fact sheet. Seven years later, the company still exists and has raised far more money than the grant, but not for SulPure. The scrubber never went to sea, and in 2024 it was handed to a spin-off.

Where Daphne Technology Stands Now

Daphne Technology SA is an active company registered in Ecublens, near Lausanne, according to Zefix, the Swiss federal index of commercial registers, and Moneyhouse. It moved its seat back to Ecublens from Saint-Sulpice in April 2025, according to the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (FOSC) entries shown on Zefix, and the company lists its address there on its website.

Its business is no longer sulphur. The company website presents it as a specialist in "methane slip" abatement, the unburned methane that escapes from the exhaust of gas engines, with two products: SlipPure, a plasma-catalytic exhaust treatment for gas compressor engines on land and dual-fuel engines at sea, and PureMetrics, an onboard system that measures emissions continuously. On 21 April 2026 it announced the first close of a CHF 15 million round led by the London investor Taranis, with Shell Ventures and Trafigura, to set up US manufacturing and expand field deployments, according to Hellenic Shipping News and the Greater Geneva Bern area agency. On 1 September 2026 it appointed Vincent Lo Cicero, a former Exterran Energy Solutions manager, as chief executive, replacing the interim CEO Jamie Brick.

The Technology: From Scrubbing Sulphur to Burning Off Methane

A conventional scrubber sprays seawater or a caustic solution through the exhaust to wash out sulphur dioxide. Open-loop systems pump the acidic wash water back into the sea; closed-loop systems collect a sludge that has to be disposed of ashore. SulPure was meant to avoid both. In a three-step process described to Discover Germany in March 2020, a filter removes particles, an electric field over carbon nanotubes turns sulphur oxides into sulphuric acid, and urea neutralises the acid into solid particles that can be sold as fertiliser. "We have no discharge into the sea," co-founder Björn Asplind told the magazine. The CORDIS report names the chemistry, conversion of sulphur oxides into ammonium sulphate, and says the prototype used 0.7% of engine power, against 1% to 3% for the version of the technique described in the EU's reference document for large combustion plants.

The cost argument was central. In November 2019 chief executive Mario Michan told Ship & Bunker that installation would cost half as much as a traditional scrubber and pay back within 12 months through cheaper fuel. Those claims were never tested on a ship.

SlipPure, today's product, uses what the company calls a patented plasma-catalytic process to break down methane in the exhaust. The company claims 90% methane reduction and the removal of 99% of carbon monoxide, 99% of formaldehyde and 60% of NO2, without engine modification, according to the April 2026 announcement. These are company figures; no independent test report on them has been published.

What SulPure Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The CORDIS objective described SulPure as an "all-in-one, ready to install, turnkey solution" that "simultaneously removes both SOx and NOx" from marine engines and is cheaper than state-of-the-art scrubbers. Its commercial target was explicit: "By servicing only 32 ships (of the potential ~53 000 vessels) with SulPure by 2023, DAPHNE's revenue will be EUR 63 million." The same target is repeated on the EU's Waterborne platform project page.

The final periodic report is frank about what happened. An R&D prototype was built and removed more than 98% of SO2, beating the initial goal, and 72% of NOx. Lloyd's Register's hazard assessment concluded the system could be piloted on a vessel or a land test facility. Daphne then packed an "alpha release" into three ISO containers, the Containerized SulPure Prototype, to install on a commercial ship, and talked to shipowners including Briese Schiffahrt and CMB. "Over a period of 2 years, DAPHNE did not reach an agreement to install the CSP on a vessel," the report says, blaming COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. Instead the prototype went to the Maritime Centre of Hochschule Flensburg in Germany, where a test engine burns heavy fuel oil. Tested with Bureau Veritas, it met the sulphur limits of MARPOL Annex VI Regulation 14 and received a certificate of compliance. The report closes by saying the company was "in good standing" to "fulfill commercial orders in 2023".

1. Working SOx removal systemDeliveredMore than 98% SO2 removal on the R&D prototype; Bureau Veritas certificate of compliance on the containerised unit in Flensburg, per CORDIS.
2. Simultaneous SOx and NOx removalPartly72% NOx reduction on the R&D prototype; the certified Flensburg test covered sulphur only.
3. Installation on a commercial shipNot achievedNo shipowner agreed in two years; tested on land instead.
4. 32 ships and €63M revenue by 2023Not achievedNo SulPure sale or ship installation has been announced by the company or anyone else.
5. Commercial orders from 2023Not achievedNone announced; SulPure was moved to a spin-off in 2024 and repositioned for gas processing.

The project finished on its scheduled end date, and the technical core worked: a sulphur cleaning unit, certified by a classification society, that turned the pollutant into a by-product. What the grant was meant to lead to, a product on ships, never followed. CORDIS lists nine trademark filings for the names Daphne Technology, SulPure and Hexagon but no patent and no peer-reviewed publication from the project, according to its results page.

The EU money was shared. CORDIS lists Daphne Technology Sweden AB, based in Gothenburg, as a linked third party with a net EU contribution of €810,934.25, against €1,622,964 for the Swiss coordinator. In March 2020 the company told Discover Germany it had opened a Swedish branch and planned to finalise the prototype in Gothenburg by the fourth quarter of 2020, with ten employees plus contractors. The Commission's October 2019 list names only the Swiss company. The current status of the Swedish affiliate could not be verified.

What Daphne Technology Has Achieved Since the Award

Private investors kept backing the company, and most of them come from the oil, gas and shipping industries. Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures invested CHF 4.9 million in January 2019, according to Ship & Bunker; Startupticker lists a round led by Aramco's fund in January 2019 without an amount. In October 2021 Shell Ventures led a CHF 10 million round with Trafigura, the tanker operator AET and Aramco, according to Trafigura and Startupticker. That release already described a broader system for nitrogen oxides, methane and carbon dioxide across fuels, not SulPure alone. Startupticker also lists a CHF 4 million round in March 2022 and a CHF 3 million round with J.P. Morgan in December 2022; no second source for those two could be found.

The methane business has produced named partners and pilots. In January 2025 Daphne and the US pipeline operator Williams won a grant of nearly $6 million from the US Department of Energy's Methane Emissions Reduction Program to fit SlipPure to four engines, according to Pipeline Journal and the Greater Geneva Bern area agency. The tanker operator AET runs PureMetrics on two LNG dual-fuel tankers, the Eagle Ventura and the Eagle Bintulu, according to Daphne. In October 2025 Daphne and Maran Gas concluded what they called the first shipboard plasma-catalytic methane abatement pilot, on the LNG carrier Maran Gas Chios, with reductions "of up to 4 ± 2 g/kWh" of methane slip, according to AJOT and LNG Industry; the announcement called the results "a first step in validating the technology at sea". In 2026 PureMetrics received a DNV statement of compliance for direct CO2 measurement under the EU MRV rules and a Lloyd's Register factual statement, according to the company. In April 2026 a field demonstration was under way on a 2,000 horsepower engine at an unnamed US midstream operator. No commercial order for SlipPure has been announced.

The Money

Swiss companies of this kind do not have to publish their accounts, so Daphne Technology's revenue, losses and headcount are not public. The commercial register shows how it has been financed. Its nominal share capital rose from CHF 100,000 at registration to CHF 387,609.19 by the end of the EIC project in December 2022, and to CHF 1,816,808.21 by April 2026, according to the FOSC entries on Zefix. Moneyhouse still shows CHF 172,867, the figure from May 2020; the official gazette entries are more recent.

A growing share of the new shares were paid for by converting claims against the company, typically loans, into equity. The gazette records conversions of CHF 3.2 million in September 2024, CHF 5,253,381.96 in November 2024 and CHF 6,222,666.648 in March 2026, the last one alongside the Taranis round. The gazette does not name the creditors. Over the same period the board changed repeatedly: four directors left between 2025 and June 2026, and two London-based directors, Roslyn Aird and Katherine Straub Corrigan, joining in December 2025 and April 2026.

Why Europe Should Care

Both of Daphne's technologies sit on EU policy priorities. Shipping's sulphur emissions were the target of IMO 2020, which the IMO says cut sulphur oxide emissions from ships by 70%. Methane is now the bigger regulatory story: the EU's first Methane Regulation for the energy sector entered into force on 4 August 2024, and the Commission notes that methane's warming effect is almost 30 times that of CO2 over 100 years. For ships, the EU Emissions Trading System covers methane and nitrous oxide from 2026, which puts a price on the slip from LNG engines that SlipPure targets.

The commercial pull so far, however, has come mostly from the United States: a Department of Energy grant, a Houston office opened in August 2025, and a 2026 round raised to build US manufacturing. A Swiss company funded by an EU grant is now scaling its next product across the Atlantic.

The Verdict

Daphne Technology has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout. The company's founding date differs between sources: the commercial register records its incorporation in December 2017, while UBS gives 2018.