US-based gas conversion company Siluria Technologies has raised $13.3m in its series A round from a venture consortium including Presidio Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of Japan-based trading and operating firm Sumitomo.
Siluria had raised $3.3m in June, according to a regulatory filing.
The extension was made by a consortium including venture capital firms Alloy Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Altitude Life Science Ventures and Lux Capital.
Alex Tkachenko, president of Siluria, which converts natural gas into ethylene under a system devised by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Angela Belcher, said: "With the right technology, natural gas becomes an essential partner to petroleum-based methods for materials manufacturing. This new funding will help Siluria drive cost and carbon out of the manufacturing supply chain while creating significant new market outlets for natural gas providers."
Traditional natural gas, or methane, was used just for producing electricity but has less carbon and cost than petroleum. Bill Joy, partner at Kleiner Perkins, in June said: "Siluria is pursuing one of the grand challenges of the petrochemical industry. The knock-on effects in the petrochemical value chain would be profound – just like previous feedstock shifts, wood to coal in the 19th century, and coal to oil in the 20th."
Ethylene is the largest global commodity chemical, with 140 million tons used annually in an industry worth $160bn per year and currently is produced in a way so it consumes more energy than any other process and is the largest contributor to greenhouse emissions in the chemical industry.