2023-08-04 04:00:00
Founding team of Magnotherm
Max Fries (2nd from left) and Timur Sirman (2nd from right) manage the company from Darmstadt.
(Photo: Jonathan Chan)
Düsseldorf When it gets hot outside, the demand for air conditioning and refrigerators increases. But the refrigerators themselves are accelerating climate change, warns the German Environmental Aid. Although the EU has recently issued stricter rules, 80 percent of all cooling systems still work with so-called fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases).
If they are released, they are around 100 to 24,000 times more harmful to the climate than CO2, warns the Federal Ministry for the Environment. Magnotherm wants to change that.
To do this, the start-up uses a magnetic effect that aims to make cooling systems more sustainable. The company from Darmstadt currently works primarily with supermarkets, but it has also developed its own refrigerator.
Who is the person you are talking about?
Magnotherm was founded in July 2019. The start-up emerged from a research group at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Max Fries and Timur Sirman have been running the company since it was founded.
Both are engineers: Sirman studied engineering and management at the TU Darmstadt and the FU Berlin. After completing his studies, he and other alumni of the university continued to research cooling based on magnetic material. His co-founder Fries, who also studied in Darmstadt, is an expert in the field of magnetocaloric materials and magnetic cooling devices.
For a year, both of them researched together how to use magnetism for cooling. They now want to turn their research into a business model. That’s why they set up the headquarters for Magnotherm in Darmstadt-Eberstadt.
How does magnetic cooling work?
The start-up’s cooling systems are based on the so-called magnetocaloric effect. This states that magnetism can heat and cool certain metals. When the material comes into the magnetic field, tiny magnetic pieces in these metals rearrange themselves, causing cooling. When the magnetic field is removed, the magnetic parts return to their original configuration and the material heats up again. This creates a cycle of heating and cooling.
This effect can be used in environmentally friendly cooling systems without having to use climate-damaging chemicals. “If we switched all refrigerators to magnetic cooling, we could save around 1.3 gigatonnes of CO2 by 2030 alone,” says Sirman. In addition, the system is also more economical and therefore cheaper: the systems developed are 40 percent more energy-efficient than conventional refrigerators in supermarkets.
Prototype refrigerator
After its founding, the start-up also developed its own refrigerators with its own cooling technology.
(Photo: Jonathan Chan)
The aim is to generate five times as much cooling energy with the system as the system consumes in electricity. This would make the system about as efficient as good heat pumps. However, the start-up’s current drinks cooler supplies only slightly more cooling energy than the electrical energy used.
The founders also know that the breakthrough on the mass market is difficult for the start-up alone. They therefore want to work with established manufacturers of cooling devices – and thus bring the technology into as many devices as possible.
Magnotherm won over a number of investors for this idea. They financed their foundation on the one hand by venture capital investors such as Extantia Capital and the Hessen Investment Management (BM-H) of the Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen. In addition, Magnotherm was funded with one million euros from the LOEWE program of the state of Hesse. The last round of financing brought in seven million euros. The turnover of the Darmstadt start-up is currently in the six-digit range.
One of the investors is also the venture capital company Revent. “Magnotherm’s founding team combines deep academic expertise and years of research experience with commercial know-how,” says Henrik Grosse Hokamp of Revent.
What are the challenges?
“In the meantime, money was very, very tight,” Sirman recalls. The founders had expected EU funding, but payment was delayed. And the corona pandemic was also a challenge for the young start-up. Supply chains came under pressure worldwide, important materials for development became scarce or missing altogether.
To show that the development works, Magnotherm has built ten of its own refrigerators that already use magnetic cooling technology. The prototypes are intended to show potential cooperation partners and investors what is possible with the technology.
Read more start-up checks here
The competition is big. “The [Kühlschrank-]The market is fiercely contested with Miele and Bosch,” says Andreas Hütten. The physicist at Bielefeld University does his own research on magnetic material. He considers the technology of the start-up to be well developed. But only in the coming years will it become clear whether it can also assert itself. In particular, there is still no proof of how durable the material for the magnetic cooling is.
What’s next?
“What’s really important is a good network,” says Sirman. That is why he has established contact with the important supermarket chains over the past few years. This is how the start-up was able to win its first customers. The right employees were recruited from the TU Darmstadt network. Magnotherm currently employs 33 people.
In the next few years, Magnotherm wants to establish its technology in supermarkets and also become profitable in the coming years.
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