Mr. Paul Woodward reports

AETHER BEGINS TESTING AT SGS FACILITY

Aether Catalyst Solutions Inc., having received financing from the National Resource Council Industrial Research Assistance Program, has sent out is fourth-generation catalyst technology for external aging at SGS Advanced Testing and Engineering. This SGS facility is well known in the automotive industry for its expertise in performing industry-standard accelerated aging on catalytic converters. SGS is performing the standard four-mode accelerated aging protocol SBC 800, which is similar to the California Air Resource Board RAT-A aging cycle. This cycle includes all the key stresses found in the catalytic converter system including lean/rich cycling and thermal shocks of approximately 90 degrees. The temperature and time are set to represent the condition of an automotive catalytic converter at the end of its useful life.

To capitalize on this testing opportunity, Aether has worked with SGS to develop a set-up that allows for 16 samples to be aged in parallel. This has allowed for multiple baseline fourth-generation catalyst samples as well as three other variants to be aged concurrently. All aged samples returned from SGS will go through the following standard automotive catalytic converters tests: light-off test, which demonstrates conversion rates as a function of temperature at a given air-to-fuel ratio, and lambda sweep test, which defines the catalyst sensitivity to the air-to-fuel ratio in a vehicle engine.

The external aging done at SGS is an important milestone on Aether's path to commercialize its technology. First, it encompasses all the representative aging stresses into one profile, thus ensuring Aether has a full understanding of its catalyst's ability at projected end of life. Second, it provides very clean and representative data to benchmark against incumbent technology. Third, the test results after aging will build an excellent information package to discuss with the automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and suppliers. Finally, it allows Aether to correlate its internal accelerated aging processes to a recognized external standard enabling the company to accurately evaluate continuing aging robustness improvements with confidence.

Testing has begun and results from the full cycle of testing are expected sometime in the near term.

Separately, the company's NRC-IRAP funding facility has been further increased to $245,000.

About Aether Catalyst Solutions Inc.

Aether is focused on providing an order of magnitude cost reduction in automotive catalytic converter catalyst, while meeting or exceeding government emission standards.