A two-year project entitled " Methane Assisted Catalytic Upgrading of Extra Heavy Crudes under Moderate Conditions" was awarded by NSERC Alliance-Mitacs Accelerate joint grant program at a total cash value of $360,000 CAD.

Our article “Nonthermal Plasma-Assisted Photocatalytic Conversion of Simulated Natural Gas for High-Quality Gasoline Production near Ambient Conditions” has been included in a new Virtual Issue titled “Recent Advances in Plasma Catalysis.” (https://pubs.acs.org/page/vi/plasma-catalysis) This collection features recent experimental and modeling papers from several ACS journals that describe research ranging from fundamental plasma/surface characterizations to applied research on chemical transformations and catalyst synthesis. Congratulations!

Our US patent application "Catalyst structure and method of upgrading hydrocarbons in the presence of the catalyst structure" (US 11389787B2) as been granted. Congratulations! A big milestone for GCRG! 

A group of five students (Sydney Sawchuk, Morgan Smith, Julia Peck, Jamie Pavan, and Marwa Abou Ahmad) supervised by Dr. Song have won the first place at the Capstone Design Fair for the Chemical Engineering discipline using their work titled “Catalytic Organic Solid Wastes Valorization Using Natural Gas”. Congratulations!

A two-year project entitled " Nonthermal Plasma Assisted Catalytic Air Purification and Sanitation at Ambient Conditions" was awarded by NSERC through Alliance Mission Grant program at a cash value of $600,000 CAD.

A two-year project entitled " Catalytic Organic Solid Wastes Valorization Using Natural Gas" was awarded by NSERC through Alliance Grant program at a cash value of $200,000 CAD.

A two-year project entitled " Catalytic Upgrading of Extra Heavy Crude Using Natural Gas" was awarded by Alberta Innovates at a cash value of $150,000 CAD.

Congratulations to Dr. Mingyuan Cao for getting Eyes High Postdoctoral Match-Funding Fellowship!

We had an outside group meeting and several activities to celebrate the achievements we have made in the past months: Escape room game, Hot Pot and Karaoke.

A two-year project entitled "Catalytic valorization of low-cost light crudes under methane environment" was awarded by NSERC through Alliance Grant Program at a cash value of $200,000 CAD.

Dr. Hao Xu’s Mitacs Elevate Award was successfully renewed for another year with a cash value of $60,000 CAD and co-sponsorship from Kara Technologies allowing him continuously working on “Catalytic Heavy Oil Upgrading Using Natural Gas” project. Congratulations to Dr. Xu!

An amendment with an additional $100,000 CAD investment was made to the two-year project entitled "Catalytic Biomass Valorization Using Natural Gas" by Kara Technologies.

A program entitled "Multifunctional Catalyst Characterization System for Supporting Catalytic Natural Gas Valorization" was awarded by NSERC through Research Tools and Instruments Program at a cash value of $150,000 CAD.

The Green Catalysis Research Group has successfully reached the desulfurization goal set by Cielo Waste Solutions and is in the process of fabricating the required desulfurization catalyst at a ton’s scale for the industrial partner. Please see the link below for their press releases:

https://www.cielows.com/cielo-provides-update-on-the-desulfurization-process-and-announces-partial-repayment-of-loan-following-warrant-exercise/

A three-month project entitled "Non-Thermal Plasma-Catalytic Dielectric Barrier Discharge Reactor for Water-Splitting" was awarded by Carbon Upcycling Technologies at a cash value of $25,000 CAD.

A three-month project was awarded by Cielo Waste Solutions aiming to significantly reduce the sulfur content of their bio-oils to lower than 15 ppm.

Dr. Hao Xu has received the Mitacs Elevate Award at a cash value of $60,000 CAD allowing him working on the project entitled "Catalytic Heavy Oil Upgrading Using Natural Gas". Congratulations to Dr. Xu!

A group of people from Alberta Innovates and Kara Technologies, visited our research group for our novel catalytic heavy crude partial upgrading technique.

A two-year project entitled "Catalytic valorization of low-cost light hydrocarbon streams under methane environment" was awarded by Alberta Innovates through Clean Resources Program at a cash value of $100,000 CAD.

A two-year project entitled "Catalytic Targeted Upgrading of Extra Heavy Crude under Natural Gas" was awarded by Kara Technologies at a cash value of $50,000 CAD.

A two-year project entitled "Catalytic Biomass Valorization Using Natural Gas" was awarded by Kara Technologies at a cash value of $100,000 CAD.

We had an outside event to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year with our sponsors from Kara Energy Services and Alberta Innovates.

Dr. Song delivered a keynote speech named "Catalytic Methane Valorization at Mild Conditions through Coupling Effect" at the Tuesday Oil & Gas Session during 69th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference held at Halifax, Canada.

We had an outside group meeting and several activities to celebrate the achievements we have made in the past months: Hot Pot & Bowling

Dr. Song signed formal collaboration and IP protection agreements with Center for New Energy & Environmental Technology at Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen and was engaged as the consultant for this center.

Dr. Song visited China and gave invited talks at following organizations:

• Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen

• Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University

• China University of Petroleum (Huadong)

Dr. Song attended ACS National Meeting at Philadelphia, PA as a session chair for honoring Dr. Umit Ozkan's award as the distinguished researcher in energy and fuels.