MITIS's EIC Accelerator Project: Turbine Heat Pumps Against Losses

MITIS promised the European Innovation Council a gas heat pump for apartment buildings, built around a microturbine the size of a small appliance. The Belgian company was selected in the EIC Accelerator pilot cut-off of 9 October 2019 with a grant-only award, and received an EU contribution of €1,346,722.13 towards a €1,923,888.75 project called FLAMINCO, which ran from 1 April 2020 to 30 June 2023, according to CORDIS. The European Commission's list of October 2019 winners names MITIS of Hannut as the only beneficiary of the project.

Three years after the project closed, the heat pump system is not on sale. MITIS's website now offers the microturbine at its core, the M10, for distributed power, biogas and methane abatement, and its investor page says the company is "entering the industrialization and commercialization phase" and is seeking investors. Its filed accounts show net losses of €1,002,210, €968,656 and €936,080 in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and cash of €232,179 at the end of 2025, according to Busibee and Companyweb, which both draw on National Bank of Belgium filings.

Where MITIS Stands Now

MITIS is still operating, but it has pivoted away from the product the EIC funded. The Belgian enterprise register (KBO) lists it in a normal legal situation, with a board that includes Michel Delanaye as managing director since July 2019, the Liège regional investor Noshaq Partners, and a director appointed in June 2025. Its 2025 accounts were filed on 8 July 2026, according to Companyweb. The register lists a second establishment, at a Liège address since June 2021, which is the address on the company's own website; the registered seat is still in Hannut.

What MITIS sells has shifted. Its website describes it as a developer of "high-speed turbomachinery for low-carbon energy" for "methane abatement, energy efficiency, and distributed power generation", plus engineering services and technology licensing. Its reference projects include a compressed-air turbine, a cryogenic compander for boil-off gas on ships and a hydrogen fuel cell backup system. The site names regional distribution partners in Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia, Oman and Canada, but no customer or installed M10 unit is named there or in any announcement found for this article. The FLAMINCO heat pump does not appear on the site.

The fuel cell work has an outside witness. The German stack maker EKPO said in October 2024 that it had delivered a first fuel cell stack to MITIS in September 2023 and a second in June 2024, for turbocharged fuel cell systems of up to 150 kW that MITIS is developing for the European Space Agency's spaceport in French Guiana under the HYGUANE hydrogen project, according to an EKPO press release reported by H2 Tech. MITIS's profile on the EuroQuity investor platform names ESA's launch site in Kourou as the first customer for a 100 kW fuel cell backup unit. Whether that system has been delivered is not public.

The Technology: A Turbine Without Oil or Flame

A microturbine is a small gas turbine that drives a generator. Its rivals in small combined heat and power units for buildings are combustion engines and fuel cells, which the FLAMINCO application said cost more to maintain. MITIS's design combines three features it has patented: flameless combustion, in which fuel and air burn below the visible flame temperature and so produce very little nitrogen oxide; a rotor that carries the compressor, turbine and generator on one shaft spinning at more than 100,000 rpm; and foil bearings that float the shaft on air, so the machine needs no lubricating oil, according to its technology page. The pitch is lower maintenance and lower emissions.

FLAMINCO began as a smaller idea. A €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 study from May to August 2019 described a household boiler replacement producing 1.5 kW of electricity and 6.5 kW of heat, according to CORDIS. That study concluded, its report says, that the electricity "cannot always be consumed or efficiently fed into the grid", so the EIC Accelerator project became a gas heat pump for 15 to 20 apartment buildings: a 10 kW microturbine, an electric heat pump and a condensing boiler under one smart controller, with up to 135 kW of heat and a promised yearly efficiency of 160%.

What FLAMINCO Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant agreement was signed on 19 March 2020. MITIS told the EU that FLAMINCO would be "our flagship and first mass market product", that users would cut gas use by 30% with a four-year payback, and that it expected €72.2M of turnover in the eighth year of sales and 14 new jobs. The final periodic report on CORDIS, covering April 2021 to June 2023, is frank about the gap.

1. 10 kWe oil-free microturbineDeliveredAfter "complex rotordynamics issues", a new rotor and bearings ran "for many hours" at 110,000 rpm. Test cell at TRL 6.
2. Heat pump moduleDeliveredA propane (R-290) heat pump was built and tested with a coefficient of performance of 3.9.
3. 160% system efficiencyModelled onlyCoupling with boiler and heat pump "was investigated by modelling"; the 189% figure is "theoretical". Target turbine efficiency 23.8% stated as "should reach".
4. CertificationNot achievedStarted with KIWA, still "on going" at project end; no certificate announced since.
5. Market launch for apartment buildingsNot achievedReport says "industrialization efforts beyond the project will be required" to reach a competitive cost. No launch or customer announced.
6. PatentsDeliveredTwo new applications, one granted in Belgium, per CORDIS.

CORDIS records the project as closed on 30 June 2023 and shows no termination; whether the end date was extended could not be verified. The technical core was built and tested. What the EIC paid for in the end, a market-ready heating product, was not delivered: the report itself says costs were still too high, certification was unfinished, and MITIS no longer markets the system.

What MITIS Has Done Since

MITIS has kept winning EU research money. It coordinates Fit4Micro, a €4,993,387.50 Horizon Europe project from October 2022 to September 2026 for a hybrid micro-CHP unit running on liquid biofuels, in which its own share is €1,476,643.26, according to CORDIS. Its latest report, to September 2025, says test prototypes were still being built and that testing of the high-pressure stage would start in the first quarter of 2026. MITIS also receives €752,325 in VALUE4FARM, a farm biogas project running to February 2027, and is named as an industry partner in the Marie Curie doctoral networks ENCODING and DESIRE. Its website lists two further projects, RESTORE and BREAD, whose funding could not be verified on CORDIS.

Private money is harder to trace. MITIS's EuroQuity profile says it has raised €3.7M in equity since its start from private investors, family offices and the Walloon public funds Wallonie Entreprendre and Noshaq, without dates. The Belgian Official Gazette records capital changes in July and December 2019, February and September 2022 and December 2024, according to its publication index, and the register gives share capital of €4,586,543.30. The amounts raised in each round have not been published. MITIS is not in the EIC Fund portfolio, which is to be expected for a grant-only award.

Staff numbers have barely moved: 11.3 full-time equivalents in 2022 and 13.3 in 2025, according to Companyweb. EuroQuity says the team has 18 people; the two figures could not be reconciled. The EIC application had promised 14 new jobs.

The Money

The accounts tell the story of a research company whose grant money is running through. Gross margin, the closest public measure of income in Belgian small-company accounts, peaked at €873,617 in 2021, during the EIC project, when MITIS made a small profit of €27,365. After FLAMINCO ended, gross margin fell to €299,162 in 2023 and the company lost about €1M in each of the next three years. Equity fell from €3,164,650 at the end of 2024 to €2,438,087 at the end of 2025, according to Busibee.

Cash is the warning sign. MITIS held €1,736,278 at the end of 2024 and €232,179 a year later, a fall of 87%, while its yearly loss stayed above €900,000. Debts were €1,151,065. Whether the company has raised money in 2026 is not public; its investor page, live in October 2026, invites "strategic industrial investors, climate-tech and deep-tech funds".

Why Europe Should Care

FLAMINCO was pitched in the language of the EU's building strategy: hybrid heating that cuts gas use in old apartment blocks that cannot easily go fully electric. That case has weakened for gas-fired equipment. The revised EU buildings directive stops short of an EU-wide gas boiler ban but requires member states to plan for "phasing out fossil fuels in heating and cooling by 2040 at the latest", as Argus reported. MITIS's turn to methane fits a newer rule: the EU's 2024 methane regulation bans routine flaring in oil, gas and coal operations and allows venting only where flaring is not feasible, and a fuel-flexible turbine that burns low-quality gas without a flame is one possible tool for that market. Whether operators will buy it is the open question.

The Verdict

MITIS has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.