Yihe Technology Completes Two Rounds of Financing in Succession to Accelerate the Industrialization of Electrochemical Synthesis Technology | Exclusive Report by 36Kr

Text | Hu Xiangyun

Editor | Hai Ruojing

36Kr has exclusively learned that Yihe Technology has completed angel round and angel + round financing worth tens of millions of yuan. The investor in the angel round is Xianfeng Changqing, and the investor in the angel + round is angel investor Fei Gesheng. The raised funds will be mainly used for team building, laboratory process optimization, and the pilot test of the first-phase products.

It is also learned that recently, Yihe Technology has launched a new round of financing, and Yuewei Capital will still serve as the exclusive financial advisor for subsequent rounds.

Yihe Technology is mainly engaged in the R & D and industrialization of electrochemical synthesis technology. Jin Qingfeng, the CEO of the company, graduated from Zhejiang University and has more than 20 years of experience in chemical engineering. He has worked at Air Liquide Group in France and served as the CTO of Cockerill Jingli in Belgium. He led the investment in a 2.5 billion yuan caprolactam new material project and has a profound understanding of the industrialization of electrochemical technology.

In addition, Wang Shuangyin, the secretary and professor of the School of Chemical Engineering at Hunan University, serves as the chief scientist of Yihe Technology, and Zou Yuqin, a professor at Hunan University, serves as the R & D supervisor of Yihe Technology. Both are deeply involved in the company's catalyst R & D and reaction mechanism research. Wang Shuangyin is the recipient of the National Outstanding Youth Fund for two terms and the chief scientist of a key R & D plan of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

"Considering the future green and sustainable industrial ecosystem, electrochemical technology can provide high - value - added products while achieving efficient carbon emission reduction through the electrification transformation of the traditional chemical industry, which has great social and economic value," Jin Qingfeng believes.

Electrochemical Synthesis: From "Laboratory" to "Industrialization"

The so - called electrochemical synthesis mainly involves directly converting electrical energy into chemical energy and using electrons as "reagents" to drive organic chemical reactions. By precisely controlling the applied voltage to adjust the "energy" of electrons, specific functional groups in molecules can be selectively oxidized or reduced to achieve highly selective chemical transformation.

"Compared with traditional chemical synthesis, electrochemical synthesis has lower costs, higher safety, and can achieve the synthesis of unique molecular structures. Compared with synthetic biology, it has better efficiency and universality, and the difficulty of industrial scale - up is lower," Jin Qingfeng introduced.

Source: Yihe Technology

Based on these advantages, the electrochemical synthesis method can be applied to the production of various products: for example, fine chemicals and pharmaceutical intermediates (such as non - natural amino acids and chiral pharmaceutical intermediates), green alternatives for the synthesis of high - risk chemicals (such as adiponitrile and organic fluorides), high - value utilization of biomass platform compounds (such as lignin and cellulose), and special molecules that are difficult to synthesize by traditional methods.

In the past, limited by factors such as R & D capabilities, engineering and equipment integration capabilities, and supply chain management, companies engaged in electrochemical synthesis production were mainly international chemical giants such as BASF and Asahi Kasei, and their purposes were often process optimization, cost reduction, and efficiency improvement. The global electrochemical synthesis market scale exceeds tens of billions of dollars. In specific fields such as the adiponitrile (raw material for nylon 66) and chlor - alkali industries, the electrochemical synthesis method has even been regarded as the leading technology, with an annual output of hundreds of thousands of tons, but it has long been monopolized by chemical giants.

"This has also created a stereotype in the market that electrochemical synthesis is a technology that only giants like BASF can afford and is only suitable for ultra - large - tonnage products, but this is not the case," Jin Qingfeng believes.

In recent years, against the background of "green electricity freedom", a number of technology - driven startups have emerged both at home and abroad. These companies usually have solid technologies and practical product selections, focusing on high - value - added fine chemicals such as pharmaceutical intermediates, spices, and special polymer monomers. For example, they use electrochemistry for selective fluorination, oxidize or reduce specific functional groups, or synthesize some non - natural amino acids. Although the market scale of these fields is not as large as that of bulk commodities, they have high profits. Moreover, the production routes using traditional synthesis methods are long and polluting, making them more suitable for the application of electrochemical technology.

"These fields are the'main battlefields' for our electrochemical synthesis startups. Currently, most of them are in the early commercialization or pilot - test stage. It can be said that electrochemical synthesis as a whole is in the stage of moving from the 'laboratory' to the 'industrial factory'," Jin Qingfeng said.

Technical Barriers and Future Plans

It is reported that Yihe Technology has built a systematic production system from reaction systems, catalysts, to reactor design and purification processes. Jin Qingfeng introduced that the difficulty in building such a system lies in "the in - depth integration of multi - disciplinary knowledge and engineering practice".

Take the scaling - up effect of electrolytic cells as an example. This is the "valley of death" from laboratory to industrial production. In a small beaker, mass transfer (reactants reaching the electrode surface) and heat transfer (dissipation of reaction heat) are very fast. However, when the electrode area is scaled up from a few square centimeters to a few square meters, problems such as uneven potential or current distribution, mass transfer limitations, and heat accumulation often occur. This requires the team to have profound knowledge accumulation in electrochemical engineering and solve these problems through the design of complex flow channels (such as zero - pole - pitch and micro - channel design), optimization of fluid dynamics, and development of efficient cooling systems.

In addition, Yihe Technology has independently developed the "Fluid - Guided Electrolytic Cell (FGE)" technology platform. Through flow - channel design, fluid dynamics optimization, and cooling system integration, it solves the problems of mass transfer and heat transfer in large - scale production and realizes the connection from the laboratory to industrialization. The FGE technology platform can quickly replicate its capabilities to more high - value - added chemicals by replacing different electrodes and adjusting process parameters, thereby shortening the development cycle and cost of new products.

"Currently, we are establishing a 'process - performance' database for the FGE technology platform and developing a digital twin model. This means that in the future, when we develop a new product, we can quickly screen out the optimal process parameter range through model simulation on the computer. The R & D cycle of new products will be shortened by more than 50%. The goal is to complete the commercial production of 5 - 8 high - value - added products by the end of 2026 and become the technology benchmark and cost leader in the field of electrosynthesis. What we pursue is not only the success of chemical reactions but also the predictable, replicable, and highly intelligent engineering implementation," Jin Qingfeng said.

It is learned that the next - stage product pipeline reserved by Yihe Technology has covered fields such as pharmaceuticals, pesticide intermediates, and new molecules.