Rise Reforming
We turn waste gases into valuable supply-secure chemicals
About Rise Reforming
Geopolitical conflicts and natural disasters frequently expose the vulnerability of the American chemical industry. The reason? Production is centralized and fossil fuel-dependent. The solution? Localized production using an undervalued resource: biogas. The US produces enough biogas to make over $20 bn/y worth of chemicals, but 60% is wasted in low-margin applications or flared altogether. Rise Reforming is commercializing a modular process to transform this underutilized biogas on-site into cheap, supply-secure chemicals. Our beachhead market is dimethyl ether (DME), used as an aerosol propellant and a low-carbon fuel additive in propane. Our target market is methanol: an established billion $ chemical and the future of low-carbon shipping. We're doing our pilot project at a Chicagoland wastewater plant. This will be the first wastewater biogas-to-methanol demo in the Americas. We're hiring for a senior chemical process engineer. Apply here: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/rise-reforming/jobs/wJ9Q9nv-senior-chemical-process-engineer
Founders
Lucas Zubillaga
Co-Founder & CTO
Co-Founder & CTO at Rise Reforming (S26). Double B.Sc. in Molecular Engineering and Physics from the University of Chicago. Prev: nuclear waste management at Argonne National Laboratory, offshore wind at Avangrid/Iberdrola. Led the design, procurement, construction, and operation of a bench-scale reforming unit with controls. Also have a Spotify playlist with 200k+ saves. Check it out at: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3rV2gyEKHxixpKa3IDQLvF?si=3458c33e03e84738&nd=1&dlsi=d0006826be884d
Jona van Oord
Co-Founder & COO
Environmentalist turned engineer. Plan on spending the rest of my life building hardware to address the climate disaster :) Co-Founder and COO @ Rise Reforming (S26), Molecular Engineering @ UChicago