Researcher Ying Zheng Funded To Work With NBIF Company

FREDERICTON, NB (February 12, 2015) – UNB professor and NBIF researcher Dr. Ying Zheng recently received $306,200 over three years from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to further develop her technology for better, cleaner and more cost efficient renewable fuels. The award comes from NSERC’s Strategic Project competition, designed to bring researchers and industry together to create technology that advances Canadian industry. Dr. Zheng will be collaborating with NBIF portfolio company Atlantic Hydrogen, who specializes in removing carbon from natural gas before it’s burned.

« Bringing industry and research together to create new economic opportunities is the very raison d’être of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, » says NBIF, « it is collaborations like these that we need to see more of in the province, between businesses and researchers, and with NBIF’s support through our Innovation Voucher Fund. » NBIF’s Innovation Voucher Fund provides New Brunswick companies up to $80,000 to fund up to 80% of a research and development project with one of the province’s publicly funded research organizations.

To date, NBIF has provided over $600,000 in funding for Dr. Zheng’s groundbreaking work in biorefinery technologies. Canada has more biomass resources per capita than any other nation, and New Brunswick is rich in renewable resources. However, Biomass is often widely distributed and low in energy density. Harvesting, transporting and storing large volumes of biomass to a centralized biofuel processing plant are very costly.

Using an innovative catalytic thermo-chemical technology discovered by Dr. Zheng, the Canada Research Chair in Chemical Processes and Catalysis is developing New Brunswick first mobile bio-refinery – moving the refinery to the source. The mobile biorefinery will provide a more efficient and less costly access to low energy density biomass.