By Business & Finance 
OxyMem, the UCD spin-out, is the only Irish company among companies from 26 countries selected as finalists in the 2014 Platts Global Energy Awards.
Established in 1999 and often described as ‘the Oscars of the energy industry’, the Platts Global Energy Awards highlight corporate and individual innovation, leadership and superior performance in 18 categories that span the entire energy complex.
OxyMem, based in Athlone, is among the companies shortlisted for the Leading Technology Award, Sustainable Innovation category.
The 2014 finalists were chosen from nearly 250 nominees from three dozen nominating countries, representing six continents, and were announced by programme host Platts, a leading global provider of energy, petrochemicals, metals and agriculture information.
OxyMem was co-founded in 2013 by Professor Eoin Casey and Dr Eoin Syron as spin-out from UCD’s School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering.
OxyMem has developed a breakthrough technology for wastewater aeration. For 100 years the cornerstone of global wastewater treatment has been ‘forced’ or ‘bubble’ aeration. OxyMem’s solution does not rely on this highly inefficient method, instead it uses gas permeable membranes capable of delivering Oxygen directly to the bacteria, resulting in a four-fold energy saving with more compact, lower cost infrastructure.
OxyMem currently employs 20 people and is in the process of closing a funding round and plans to increase staff numbers to 35 within the next year.
Wayne Byrne, OxyMem’s managing director said: “It is always humbling to be nominated for an award, but being nominated on a global stage is outstanding. The announcement endorses OxyMem as a global innovative solution for one of the largest energy consuming industries in the world.”
Brendan Cremen, UCD Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation said: “I would like to congratulate OxyMem on being shortlisted for a prestigious Platts Global Energy Award. Being the only Irish company among the shortlisted companies from around the world highlights the quality of spin-out companies emerging from University College Dublin. It also exemplifies the hard work and dedication of OxyMem’s founders, management and wider team, in commercialising world-class research outputs which have global impact, with the support of our technology transfer and enterprise development team at NovaUCD.”
OxyMem will now go before a panel of judges made up of former OPEC energy ministers, national regulators, former heads of major energy companies and leading academics and legislators.
Award winners will be announced at the 2014 Platts Global Energy Awards event which takes place in New York on December 11th.
Earlier this year OxyMem, an Enterprise Ireland client company, won the overall ‘Innovation of the Year’ Award at the 2014 Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation Awards. In June the company also won the first Water Innovation SME Award in Europe for Membrane Technologies.
OxyMem has also been shortlisted for three categories in the 2014 Intellectual Property Awards (Inventor of the Year, IP R&D-Indigenous and Tech IP), the winners of which will be announced later today. To view the full list of 2014 Platts Global Energy Awards finalists visit http://geaweb.platts.com/Finalists/Finalists2014
