We turn variable dairy and food residues into medium-chain acids, the building blocks for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), with a digital twin driven by artificial intelligence (AI) holding the microbial community in balance.
Sensors, actuators and data acquisition designed around what the twin needs.
Predicts hours ahead, tests adjustments in simulation, then acts.
At the Technical University of Munich (TUM): 3D-printed bioreactors for bioplastic fermentation. EU patent application filed.
Accelerators at UnternehmerTUM. ~80 customer interviews.
Custom bioreactor for a client who then secured €2M in funding.
Funded by that project. Reactor and twin built as one system.
Minimum viable product: live lab fermentation feeding real-time data into the twin and its machine-learning models.
Finalist in the 2026 TUM IDEAward for research-based startup ideas.
Consortia for jet-fuel precursors from local waste.
Industrial manufacturing partners, EU product certification, company founding.
85% imported, and 80% of it is used cooking oil. Plants operating today reach about 1.5 Mt/yr by 2030, short of the ~2.1 Mt the 6% mandate needs.
Kept out: methane-forming and propionate-forming microbes, which take the same carbon and lactate away from the elongators.
Carbon-footprint reduction of a food-waste-to-SAF biorefinery using mixed-culture chain elongation. The range depends on feedstock quality and how well operating conditions are tuned to it (Zaborowska et al., 2026). Holding the consortium steady is what moves a plant to the top of that range.
Illustrative model, not measured data
Whey and food residues change in lactose, protein, fat and salt with season, dairy product and supplier.
The chain elongators that make caproate are the most sensitive to salts, pH and their own product.
When they fall behind, carbon ends up as short acids or methane instead of jet-fuel precursors.
Hydrolysers, lactate producers and chain elongators that turn whey and food residues into medium-chain fatty acids.
Measure the feed, the products and the community itself.
Deliberately varied lab runs on the Cellium bioreactor. 50+ signals plus the analytical data teach the twin how feed, community and output connect.
The twin drives the fermenter: feed rate, pH and product removal, tested until the consortium holds under any batch.
Whey and food-processing residues, pretreated into a liquid feed. A Raman scan gives its lactose, protein, fat and salt content before it enters the fermenter.
It simulates the consortium's response hours ahead and sets the feed and conditions before problems start.
The elongators stay active and C10 is extracted as it forms, then upgraded into SAF.
Caproate from real residues, under first closed-loop control.
One process from feed to recovered caproate, run on varied batches.
Production-like conditions and a business case that holds.
Caproic acid is one of the C6–C10 acids esterified into synthetic turbine oil base stocks.
Bio-based oils, solvents and fuel additives for aviation and industry, sold in larger batches.
Medium-chain acids upgraded into jet-range hydrocarbons for blending.
The Technical University of Munich's biotech startup hub. Cellium has been part of it for over two years and uses its wet lab, pilot equipment and prototyping workshop.
Industrial process equipment manufacturer with a biotechnology line covering lab, pilot and production fermenters. Supports Cellium with mentorship, equipment and scale-up.
Research and technology-transfer company bridging lab and factory in bioprocesses and environmental biotechnology. Supports microbial and process development.