Investors at the Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum have named the 10 most-promising startups among the group of 100 clean tech companies participating in the event.

The 22nd annual event was held yesterday, Sept. 18, at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and was part of the second Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week.

The most-promising startups will receive $7,000 in in-kind legal services from Baker Botts.

The 10 most-promising companies included:

• Houston-based Xplorobot, which has developed laser gas imaging technology for the first handheld methane detection device approved by the EPA as an alternative test method
• Seattle-based Badwater Alchemy, a desalination company that uses nano materials to purify saline water at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods
• San Francisco-based Ammobia, which is developing a clean ammonia production process
• Illinois-based Celadyne Technologies, which is building hydrogen for industrial decarbonization with durable and efficient fuel cells and electrolyzers
• Massachusetts-based MacroCycle Technologies, which converts plastic waste in the form of bottles, food trays and polyester textiles into virgin-grade mPET resin
• Yorkshire, England-based AtoMe, a global developer of zero-carbon fertiliser products
• Colorado-based Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS) Energy, a renewable energy semiconductor manufacturing company
• North Carolina-based Lukera Energy, which is converting waste methane into high-value fuel
• Midland, Texas-based AI Driller, a company that uses AI and machine learning to enable remote operations and provide historical drilling data for survey management, anti-collision monitoring and iob reporting
• New York-based Fast Metals Inc., which has developed a chemical process to extract valuable metals from complex toxic mine tailings that is capable of producing iron, aluminum, scandium, titanium and other rare earth elements using industrial waste and waste CO2 as inputs

Arculus Solutions won the People's Choice Award. The New Jersey-based company retrofits natural gas pipelines for safe hydrogen transportation. It also won Track A: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, Buildings, Water, & Other Energy Solutions at the Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek earlier this year.

The 100 energy technology ventures selected to participate in the forum were named earlier this year. See the full list here.