NUNOS, a German Aerospace Center spinoff commercializing biofilter technology first developed for astronaut waste management, said Wednesday it secured €570,000 in pre-seed funding led by the state development bank NRW.BANK, with participation from several unnamed German business angels.
The Hürth-based company is betting that farmers will pay to convert livestock slurry into plant-ready fertilizer using a biological process being adapted from closed-loop life-support systems designed for long-duration space missions. It's an unusual technology transfer, but the timing may work in NUNOS's favor. Fertilizer prices have proven volatile in recent years, and Europe recently opened the door for farms to substitute manure-derived nutrients for imported mineral fertilizers under new RENURE framework rules adopted in February, though the framework primarily covers certain established processes and doesn't yet explicitly include NUNOS's biological method.
NRW.BANK put in €300,000 through its NRW.SeedCap program, while business angels accounted for €270,000, according to the state development bank's announcement. Separately from the €570,000 in new funding, NUNOS also converted €200,000 in earlier convertible notes from NRW.BANK's NRW.SeedCon program, issued in 2024, into equity as part of the transaction. The German Federal Environmental Foundation granted the startup €125,000 in January.
"NUNOS brings space research into agricultural practice," Johanna Antonie Tjaden-Schulte, a board member at NRW.BANK, said in the press release.
From astronaut urine to pig barns
The company's core technology is an adaptation of the C.R.O.P. biofilter, a process the German Aerospace Center developed to recycle urine into fertilizer for closed-loop life support on future missions to Mars or extended lunar habitats. On Earth, NUNOS applies the same principles to treat slurry and biogas digestate on farms.
The system works by biologically acidifying the material to around pH 6.0, which keeps nitrogen locked in as ammonium rather than letting it escape into the atmosphere as ammonia gas, according to the German Federal Environmental Foundation's project database. The fully automated setup can be installed directly in barns or positioned ahead of slurry storage tanks, integrating with existing farm infrastructure.
CEO Tim Niklas Paulke, an environmental engineer, described the process as converting slurry "into fertilizer within a 24-hour cycle using a purely biological method" in remarks to the German Federal Environmental Foundation in January. NUNOS holds an exclusive license from DLR for the patented process.
The company claims the treatment yields a near-odorless liquid fertilizer and a small nutrient-rich solid fraction while cutting greenhouse-gas and ammonia emissions. Field trials planned for this year are meant to validate a projected yield increase of up to 20%, a projection that remains to be confirmed through future testing.
Pilots and early traction
Paulke and co-founder Fabian Mierbach, an electrical engineer, registered NUNOS as a GmbH on May 22, 2024. Xenia Steurer joined as CTO in 2025. LinkedIn lists the company at 2-10 employees, typical for a hardware startup at this stage.
Before incorporating, the founders ran pilot equipment at DLR's Cologne campus and worked with Forschungszentrum Jülich, the University of Bonn, and Landwirtschaftskammer NRW, according to a December 2024 profile in Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. NUNOS installed its first commercial-scale pilot at a biogas facility near Cologne in 2025.
The startup participated in ESA Business Incubation Centre North Rhine-Westphalia from 2024 through early this year and went through Circular Valley's seventh accelerator cohort in 2024. A recent LinkedIn post suggested the company is testing its fertilizer product with Sinterra, though details of that partnership weren't disclosed.
Crowded but fragmented field
NUNOS enters a market where several technologies compete to extract value from manure. N2 Applied uses plasma to fix nitrogen from air directly into slurry, while Sedron Technologies employs mechanical vapor recompression to evaporate and concentrate nutrients. NUNOS's biological approach sidesteps both the plasma-electric and thermally driven routes, potentially offering lower energy consumption, though the company hasn't published comparative data.
The broader context favors manure-processing startups. Germany faces binding ammonia reduction commitments under EU air-quality directives, with tightened industrial-emissions standards taking effect in 2026, according to the Federal Environment Agency. Volatility in global nitrogen fertilizer markets has also pushed policymakers to look for domestic nutrient sources, particularly as trade disruptions periodically constrict supply.
NUNOS will use the pre-seed capital to prepare for market entry, expand marketing and sales, and build on its initial pilot installations. Two additional pilot plants are slated to go online at farms this year, followed by further crop trials in 2027 and the company's first system sales later that year.
Whether farmers will pay enough to justify the capital investment in on-site biofilters remains an open question. The company hasn't disclosed pricing, and equipment amortization timelines will likely vary depending on herd size, local fertilizer costs, and regulatory pressure. Still, for a technology born in the vacuum of space, NUNOS has at least found something resembling gravity in the European agricultural market.
