In the wake of a new financing round, technological start-up Siluria Technologies (San Francisco, California / USA; www.siluria.com) has raised another USD 30m, bringing the group’s total venture capital to more than USD 63m. Spun out of Cambrios Technologies (Sunnyvale, California / USA; www.cambrios.com), two years ago Siluria announced that it had genetically engineered a virus to convert methane to ethylene in a process that requires much less energy and heat than steam-cracking – see Plasteurope.com of 07.07.2010. The process is particularly suited to exploit the abundant shale gas reserves in North America, the group says.

Siluria’s low-temperature catalytic-based process employs the “catalytic coupling of methane” – a process the group says is scalable using existing equipment. Siluria is raising the money to build a 10,000 gal/y demonstration facility to test the new process on a large scale. However, the firm says the funds it has obtained to date are insufficient to build such a plant, for which it will require additional investment. Siluria added that an alternative would be to supply its catalyst and license the process to another company, saying it is looking for joint ventures with other companies.

Existing investors in the group include Bright Capital, Vulcan Capital, ARCH Venture Partners, The Wellcome Trust, Alloy Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Lux Capital, Altitude Life Science Ventures and Presidio Ventures.