Pascal Bets a Sponge-Like Solid Can Reinvent the Heat Pump

A Sponge-Like Solid that looks like a kitchen sponge could soon be doing the cooling inside refrigerators and the heating inside home heat pumps. Pascal, a startup spun out of Harvard University, has raised fresh funding to commercialize a porous material that moves heat without the chemical refrigerants that have warmed the planet for decades. The company says appliances built around the Sponge-Like Solid run about a fifth more efficiently than today's models, a gain that could trim household energy bills while cutting one of the stealthiest sources of greenhouse emissions.

The system starts with carbon dioxide compressed into cartridges packed with the porous material. As the gas threads through the pores, its molecules collide with the walls and hand off energy as heat, which a heat exchanger carries out of the appliance. Reverse the flow, and the same setup absorbs heat instead, according to TechCrunch's account of the company's research (TechCrunch). Because the solid stays sealed inside its cartridges, it can never leak into the atmosphere the way conventional refrigerants do.

From lab confusion to new funding

The discovery began as a measurement nobody could explain. Co-founders Adam Slavney and Jinyoung Seo were testing a new class of materials at Harvard when the results came back different from what the setup should have produced. "Why are these things different? What did we change?" Slavney told TechCrunch. The pair had an inkling within about three months, but it took a year or two to prove what was happening. That proof became Pascal, with Slavney as chief executive and Seo as chief technology officer. The research grew out of the university's Mason Group, and the team built its first cooling prototype at Harvard in the summer of 2022.

Investors just handed the company eight point five million dollars in a seed extension, co-led by Sazze Partners and LB Investment, with KDB Silicon Valley participating, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The round came together faster than expected because Pascal had already signed a pilot contract with a multinational beverage company, Slavney said. The startup previously raised eight million dollars in May 2024 from Engine Ventures and Khosla Ventures, bringing its total venture backing to roughly sixteen and a half million dollars.

Why your fridge is a climate problem

The cooling industry has been chasing a better refrigerant for as long as refrigerators have existed. Older chemicals like Freon tore at the ozone layer; newer replacements such as R-134a spare the ozone but remain potent greenhouse gases when they escape. Refrigerant leaks alone account for about two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to industry estimates cited in coverage of the round (Dealroom). Meanwhile, demand for air conditioning could triple by mid-century, which makes every point of efficiency more valuable. Pascal's approach sidesteps the chemistry entirely: there is no gas refrigerant to leak, only carbon dioxide and a sealed solid.

Durability looks promising so far. The company says its material has survived three hundred thousand operating cycles, roughly a year of continuous use. Slavney described the material as very robust under repeated stress. Perhaps the more important claim is about cost: the system uses conventional components around its cartridges, which the team believes will keep prices low enough for mass adoption. "We're using conventional systems to do it," Slavney told TechCrunch. "That means we believe we can make it cheap, and that means we can make it widespread."

What it could mean for your bills

For households, the pitch is straightforward. Heating and cooling are among the largest line items on home energy bills, and a meaningfully more efficient heat pump would shrink both the bill and the carbon footprint behind it. Because the solid refrigerant is sealed, owners would also avoid the slow leak-and-recharge cycle that plagues conventional systems. The stakes echo what GenZ NewZ reported about the human cost of the energy transition: cleaner technology only matters if it reaches the people who pay the bills.

The pilot with the beverage company will be the first real-world test. Commercial refrigeration runs nearly nonstop, so any efficiency gain shows up fast on the power meter. Material innovation is becoming a theme across green tech, from solid-state cooling to algae-based black dye for fashion.

Skepticism is warranted, and the company knows it. The technology remains at the prototype stage: Pascal aims to deliver its first prototype early in 2027, followed by a batch of more polished refrigerators the year after. Dealroom's coverage of the round notes the open question plainly — whether the claimed efficiency gains survive real-world trials and manufacturing scale-up. Until the beverage-company pilot produces data, the Sponge-Like Solid is a promising lab result with funding, not a product you can buy. But if it works outside the lab, the most boring appliance in your home could become one of its greenest.