How Otechos Steered Its EIC Accelerator Compressor Into Profit

Most compressors hate liquid. A drop of water in a piston or screw machine means erosion, broken valves and a separator that has to sit upstream to keep the gas dry. Otechos AS, a small engineering company in Tvedestrand on Norway's south coast, says its rotary machine does the opposite: it uses injected water to seal, cool and lubricate the compression chamber, and swallows gas and liquid together. In the European Innovation Council's May 2020 Green Deal round, the Commission's list of EIC Accelerator pilot winners named Otechos as a blended finance winner for CRCP, "new technology for cost-efficient, low-maintenance liquid gas compression". The list gives the project one row, with no partner company.

The grant was €2,314,112.50 towards a €3,305,875 project that ran from 1 October 2020 to 28 February 2023, according to CORDIS, the EU's research database. Otechos's own EU funding page confirms the grant agreement number and the Green Deal topic. Three and a half years after the project ended, the company is profitable on a small scale, its sales have doubled since 2023, and its headline news is no longer about hydrogen.

Where Otechos Stands Now

Otechos AS is an active company. The Brønnøysund Register Centre shows no bankruptcy or winding-up, a 2025 annual report on file and eight employees registered in May 2026, according to its entry in the Central Coordinating Register. The business data service Funnelfeedr also lists eight employees and names Christopher A. Vanay as chief executive and Tor Arne Hauge as founder and chair. In October 2025 Otechos absorbed a related company, Otechos Milieutech AS, in a merger, according to the register's public announcements.

Its 2026 news is about pumps, not hydrogen. In February the company reported that a prototype pump for liquid CO2 under ship transport conditions, 15 to 19 bar and minus 28 to minus 35°C, had been tested at the FALCON loop of the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Kjeller, as part of the Horizon Europe project ENCASE. The Norwegian energy industry export council Norwep lists the same CRP CO2 pump as "developed and demonstrated as part of the ENCASE project". In March Otechos said it would show a downhole electric submersible pump, the dCRP, at the ONS 2026 energy fair in Stavanger, developed with the oil producer Aker BP in a project backed by NOK 19.7 million of public funding. Norwep's listing of the dCRP describes it as an artificial lift pump for gassy, sandy oil wells. The Aker BP partnership and the funding figure come from Otechos alone; no Aker BP or Research Council of Norway statement could be found.

The company also renewed its ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certificates in March 2026, three years after first certification, it said.

The Technology: Eight Strokes per Turn

Otechos calls its principle centric reciprocation. Instead of a piston, the machine has two coaxial rotors with two vanes each, turning in the same direction but driven through elliptical gears so that their speeds vary, 90 degrees out of phase. The four chambers between the vanes expand and contract twice per revolution, which the company says yields eight compression strokes per turn, according to its technology page. Project coordinator Tor Arne Hauge described the same design to CORDIS in a results article on the earlier CRC project: "Valveless inlets and outlets and very few moving parts result in an oil-free compression process."

Two features set it apart from the screw and piston compressors that dominate industry. It has no valves, and water, not oil, seals and cools the chambers, so the compressed gas leaves without oil. And because it was built to run wet, it can take a mixed stream of gas and liquid, which is why the same machine can be sold as a compressor, a multiphase pump or both. The final CRCP report claims the machine handled liquid fractions "from 0% to 100%" in the inlet stream. These are the company's own test results; no independent publication of them could be found.

What CRCP Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

CRCP was Otechos's second large EU grant for the same machine. The first, CRC, was an SME Instrument Phase 2 project from July 2017 to June 2019 with an EU contribution of €1,596,875, for an oil-free air compressor aimed at nitrogen generators on ships, according to CORDIS. That proposal promised a large-scale pilot with Air Products, accumulated revenues of €67.81 million, profits of €23.4 million and at least 29 new full-time jobs by the fifth year after the project. Its last report describes prototypes and a test facility under preparation, but no pilot result.

The EIC award moved the target. CRCP set out to mature and commercialise a "compressor enabled to pump" for two Green Deal uses: compressing ammonia in compression-absorption heat pumps that recover industrial waste heat, and compressing hydrogen straight after electrolysis, where the gas is wet. The objective promised energy savings of at least 30%, up to 45% less CO2 and 35% lower operating costs than rival machines. The final report divides the work into two tasks: design, build and test prototypes, then "demonstrate and qualify the CRCP in industrial pilots". It states plainly that the work of the period "pertains to task 1".

1. Redesign, build and test CRCP prototypesDeliveredCompressors redesigned, assembled and tested with air, water, CO2 and hydrogen, per the CORDIS report.
2. At least 30% energy savingsSelf-reportedCompany reports 35% of a pilot partner's benchmark energy use in hydrogen tests; data not published.
3. Industrial pilots for ammonia heat pumps and hydrogenNot deliveredReport covers task 1 only; no pilot partner or pilot result announced since.
4. Commercial hydrogen compressorNot deliveredA product sheet exists; no buyer or installation announced.
5. First salesPartlyFirst order for a CO2 compressor at project end, per CORDIS; buyer not named.

The prototype work was done, though not on the original schedule: CORDIS dates the project at 29 months, while Otechos's EU page still gives a duration of 24 months. What the grant was meant to buy beyond the test bench, qualification at customer sites, is missing from the public record. A 2022 Otechos pitch sheet for the French-Norwegian chamber of commerce advertised "46% less energy usage" for hydrogen compression, a different figure from the 65% saving in the CORDIS report, and neither number has been checked by a third party in public. The CRCP is therefore rated partly delivered.

What Otechos Has Achieved Since the Award

The clearest progress is in other markets for the same machine. Otechos is a partner in ENCASE, a Horizon Europe research infrastructure project for CO2 transport and injection coordinated by IFE, which runs from January 2023 to December 2026; Otechos's share is an EU contribution of €269,687 on costs of €419,375, according to CORDIS. The CO2 pump test at IFE came out of that project. The downhole pump for Aker BP takes the machine back to oil and gas, the industry the founders came from: Otechos's company page says they earlier founded Quickflange AS, a pipe-flange technology company. Through a group company, H2 Supply, Otechos now also sells ATEX- and IECEx-certified hydrogen generators for gas analysers in hazardous areas, according to its H2 Supply page; the register lists H2-SUPPLY AS at the same Tvedestrand address, founded in January 2017.

Governance has also shifted. In August 2026 Otechos announced that Jon Erik Reinhardsen, a former chair of Equinor, had become chair of Otechos Legacy AS, a sister company with the same address that until 2021 was called Otechos Pumps AS. The register confirms the name change and lists Reinhardsen, Hauge, Vanay and Paul Morten Wiencke as its board, and classes its business as leasing of intellectual property. How ownership and patents are split between Otechos AS and Otechos Legacy AS is not public.

The Money

Otechos AS has grown, from a small base. Sales income rose from NOK 9.36 million in 2023 to NOK 13.21 million in 2024 and NOK 19.19 million in 2025, according to annual accounts filed with the Register of Company Accounts; Funnelfeedr shows revenue of NOK 13.3 million, matching the 2024 total operating income in the filed accounts. The net result swung from a loss of NOK 3.41 million in 2023 to profits of NOK 0.99 million in 2024 and NOK 3.86 million in 2025. Equity reached NOK 10.84 million at the end of 2025, against debts of NOK 14.39 million and cash of NOK 0.54 million. The accounts do not say which products or customers the sales came from.

Why Europe Should Care

Compression is a large, quiet energy cost. The CRC report cites estimates that compressed air systems use about 10% of the electricity consumed by EU industry. The EU's hydrogen strategy of July 2020 and the REPowerEU plan, which aims to produce 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen in the EU by 2030, depend on compressing hydrogen cheaply, according to the Commission's hydrogen page. Carbon capture needs pumps too: the Net-Zero Industry Act, in force since 28 July 2024, sets a goal of 50 million tonnes of annual CO2 injection capacity by 2030, according to the IEA and the law firm Thommessen, which notes that the Act is not yet part of the EEA agreement that covers Norway. A European maker of efficient compressors and CO2 pumps fits both agendas, but only if its machines reach customers at scale.

The Verdict

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