Coimbra startup nets €700,000 to develop detergents from used cooking oils

A company that began at the University of Coimbra has won EU funding worth €700,000 to develop a capsule that turns used cooking oils into detergent.

The company formed by a group of Coimbra University chemists won the €700,000 funding to develop ecological detergents from used cooking oils.

ExoXperience was founded in 2016 at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology at Coimbra University (FCTUC) and won the funding on the back of Portugal 2020.

The money will be used to develop One-N-Done, a 100% ecological capsule that “converts used cooking oils, a waste-product that is highly toxic, into different detergents (floor cleaners, glass cleaners, soaps, washing up liquid among others) cheaply and automatically.”

The company says that one litre of oil contaminates one million litres of water.

The project, which involves 10 researchers from FCTUC’s Chemistry Department, Technocanto and the Sonae Group aims to have the capsule on the market within two years.

ExoXperience has already created a “technology to turn used oils into cleaning products using a protein which acts as a biocatalyst.”

This technology, which is currently patent pending, uses an existing protein in the human body produced by the pancreas to process ingested fats.

In practice, “The formula developed by EcoXperience in partnership with Coimbra University mimics what occurs in the human body, transforming triglycerides in used oils into new components,” says César Henrique and Filipe Antunes, two of the founders of the ‘startup’.