Montréal, Québec – July 9th, 2024: Syniad Innovations Inc. is pleased to announce the launch of a new clean technology venture, CataLum Technologies Inc.
CataLum is the brainchild of eminent McGill Chemistry Professor, Chao-Jun “CJ” Li, and was founded to develop and commercialize novel catalysts and chemistries that harness light to reduce the amount of energy, toxic solvents and carbon emissions required for high-value chemicals production.
CataLum’s photocatalysts have demonstrated unprecedented reaction efficiencies for a range of critical industrial processes including carbon capture, ammonia generation, and polyethylene breakdown. CataLum is currently developing conversion processes of natural gas into high-value chemicals such as cyclohexane, methanol, formic acid, ethylene glycol and toluene, compounds which are critical to the supply chains of many household products. CataLum’s photocatalysts also offer the promise of profitable cleaner production for various key chemical precursors for pharmaceuticals, green solvents and biodegradable polymers.
“Over the last few years, our McGill Green Chemistry Laboratory has achieved several breakthrough results for a wide array of fundamental industrial reactions that were made possible by our novel nanostructured semi-conductor based photocatalysts. It is now time to demonstrate that they can scale to industrial yields and volumes,” states CJ Li, now appointed as CataLum’s CSO.
Iain Evans, Syniad’s Chief Investment Officer added: “We are declaring a strong and enduring commitment to CataLum in its mission to shift the chemical industry towards lower carbon, lower energy and much more environmentally sound processes. CataLum represents the first of several deep technology ventures that we will fund to leverage the world-class research undertaken in Québec’s leading academic institutions.”
McGill’s technology transfer office provided substantial support to the inventions from Prof. Li’s research team, including patent protection and funding. “McGill and Syniad have a very complementary view on how to bring early-stage technology to commercialization. CataLum is one of several projects in our pipeline of disruptive deep tech spinoffs,” says Dr. Mark Weber, Director, Innovation and Partnerships, McGill University.
About CataLum Technologies Inc.
Founded in Montréal, in 2022, by researchers from McGill’s Green Chemistry Laboratory, CataLum develops and commercializes photocatalytic solutions to fundamentally transform legacy industrial chemistries to overhaul their carbon, energy and environmental footprints. www.catalum.com
For information:
Catherine Gagnon, CTO