Thank you for your good work, Chair, on the environment and for suggesting some of these very interesting witnesses to be before us today. That was a shameless promotion of your good work, Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses so much for being here.
I'm going to start with Mr. Gradek. I'm trying to grasp this technology. It seems so simple, and I'm bewildered as to why this hasn't been commercialized yet. You said you've been working on this for 14 years, that you've been working with the University of Alberta. We had Dr. Murray Gray with us this morning, Dr. Selma Guigard, and Dr. Schindler. Have you worked with any of these people? I think that when I was asking Drs. Gray and Guigard about coming technologies, that was not mentioned. Have you been working with any of the industries in the oil sands? Could you elaborate?
Page 8 of your handout shows a brief on the process. My understanding, and what we've heard in other testimony, is that you have a problem with getting the clay out of the water. You can remove the bitumen, but the clay will stay suspended in the tailing water for years, maybe 30 or 40 years, and that's what makes it so difficult. In your demonstration, you're suggesting the beads are picking up the bitumen and the clay, because when they run through the process it says clay and other fine particles are separated from the bitumen-coated beads.
Is the clay also removed from the water so you end up with clean water?