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Inventys Announces Strategic Changes to its Leadership Team
Wayne G. Thomson leads company as Executive Chairman. VeloxoTherm™ co-inventor Soheil Khiavi named as CTO. New direction focuses on open collaboration.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — May 24, 2016 — Inventys today announced several leadership changes to support the company’s ongoing strategy to transform the carbon capture industry with its VeloxoTherm™ process.
The Board of Directors appointed Wayne G. Thomson, a seasoned oil, gas, and technology executive as Executive Chairman, replacing CEO André Boulet. Soheil Khiavi, co-inventor of the VeloxoTherm™ process, was named to the new role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The newly appointed executive team also includes co-founders Brett Henkel, VP, Commercial Development and Darryl Wolanski, VP, Business Development; plus, Karen Miller, VP Finance; and Matthew Stevenson, Director, Corporate Strategy.
“To mitigate the risks of climate change, we will need to capture carbon from all localized sources, especially coal and natural gas power plants, and also from cement, steel, fuel, and petrochemical plants,” says Inventys Board Member Dr. Steven Chu, former US Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate. “Inventys is developing technical advances that should dramatically reduce the cost of carbon capture so that it can be deployed worldwide. If successful, our technology could revolutionize carbon capture.”
“The Board thanks Mr. Boulet for his contributions to the business,” said Mr. Thomson. “This change reflects Inventys’ renewed interest in developing partnerships with industry and academia which will be critically important in advancing the company’s next generation carbon capture technology.”
As CTO, Mr. Khiavi will lead the company’s focus on developments in adsorbent materials and broaden the application of its core technology platform for other gas separations. Mr. Khiavi has more than 20 years of experience in fundamental research and product development and is cited on at least 100 patents and patent applications and numerous technical publications in the field of gas separations
“Inventys’ Adsorbent Structures are a technology platform that can be used in numerous gas separation processes, including carbon capture,” said Mr. Khiavi. “Adsorbent structures are an enabling technology that can employ adsorbent materials of most any description and put them to use in real-world applications.”
ABOUT INVENTYS
Inventys aims to revolutionize carbon capture and accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy. The company’s VeloxoTherm™ process uses patented adsorbent structures and a rapid cycle thermal swing process to avoid the high costs associated with other conventional carbon capture processes. For more information, please visit www.inventysinc.com or connect with us on Facebook or Twitter @inventysinc.
For more information please contact:
Alison Cartier
Manager, Marketing & Communications
Inventys
M: +1.778.990.8734
O: +1.604.456.0504 x256
Email: alison.cartier@inventysinc.com
For printing or downloading a pdf copy of the release: 2016-05-24_Leadership-Changes_news
Former US Energy Secretary Steven Chu Joins Board
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, (CNW)—Dec. 18, 2013—Nobel Laureate and former US Secretary of Energy, Dr.Steven Chu has joined the Board of Directors of Inventys Thermal Technologies, a company that has developed a breakthrough method for capturing CO2 from coal and natural gas power plants. It is significantly less costly to build and operate than competing systems. The captured CO2 can be injected underground for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), or can be used in industrial applications such as chemical manufacturing.
“Carbon capture is a critical technology to move us to a clean energy future and Inventys has developed a practical, compact, and low cost system that allows existing fossil fuel power plants to dramatically lower their carbon emissions,” Dr. Chu said. “I look forward to serving on their board and helping guide the company forward.”
The Inventys system, called VeloxoTherm™, uses significantly less energy than competing systems, and this, combined with low capital costs, results in a capture cost of about $15 per ton of CO2, less than 1/5th the cost of current processes. In addition, the Inventys system is less than 1/10th the size of competing systems and is small enough to retrofit to existing power plants by connecting it directly to the flue stack.
Dr. Chu is currently the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. Before serving as Secretary of Energy in the first Obama administration, Dr. Chu was Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Chu won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for “development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.”
Andre Boulet, CEO of Inventys, said “Dr. Chu brings an incredibly broad expertise to Inventys — from molecular interactions to the macroeconomics of energy systems, and everything in between. We are thrilled to have him join our board.”
“I have been admiring Dr. Chu’s work since he led LBNL to preeminence in energy research. His deep knowledge and broad experience will bring tremendous value to Inventys,” said Dan Miller, Managing Director of The Roda Group, the lead investor in Inventys and the largest private investor in renewable oils company Solazyme.
The Inventys VeloxoTherm™ system is based on a Low Pressure Thermal Swing method. Put simply, a slowly rotating structure holds a proprietary material that traps carbon dioxide when it is cool and releases it when it is hot. On half of the rotation cycle, flue gas from the power plant is passed through the material and the CO2 in the flue gas is captured. On the other half of the cycle, steam is injected into the material to release the CO2, the leftover steam is condensed out leaving pure CO2, and the material cools down to be ready for the next cycle. The CO2 is then pumped underground for CCS or EOR applications, or used as a feedstock for chemical manufacturing or other industrial applications.
Inventys Thermal Technologies is based in Vancouver, Canada. The development of its technology is being supported by Sustainable Development Technology Canada, Alberta’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation, and the National Research Council. More information about the company is available at http://www.inventysinc.com.
For more information, contact:
Andre Boulet, CEO
Inventys Thermal Technologies
andre.boulet(at)inventysinc.com
+1-604-456-0504
SOURCE Inventys Thermal Technologies
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