Thank you, Nathan.
The first case study we want to talk about is MegaSol. MegaSol was developed at the request of and with a lot of support from Suncor oil sands. They asked us to develop a new, cleaner degreaser that would work faster and have better EHS characteristics than what was currently available on the market. The development of MegaSol was during a period in our company when we were still quite small, without significant resources to invest, so the SR and ED credits were invaluable in allowing us to make the many blends that brought us to the final composition, and also financed the multiple trips to the site for test conditions in their wash base.
The resulting product reduced the amount of fresh water that was used in cleaning the trucks. It also reduced chemical employee sick days, due to the chemical, down to zero from however many they had before, and also reduced the energy consumption in the wash base. Most of the oil sands locations have also experienced greenhouse gas reduction emissions because they heat their wash water, and with less wash water they use less heat when washing with MegaSol.
Currently, all the mining oil sands operations are using MegaSol, but it's taken us 13 years to get the industry to fully adopt the product into their operations. We believe that a commercialization program that's tied in some manner to the SR and ED program would help to speed up the adoption of new clean technologies and will help the R and D projects that the government is already invested in to achieve full commercialization faster, resulting in quicker returns on investment for both the R and D company and the government through increased tax revenue.
The second product we wanted to discuss is called MudWash. For many years Evergreen Solutions has had a major share of the market for rig cleaners in western Canada and North Dakota. But during the downturn in the economy and the simultaneous drop in oil prices, we saw our position eroding very quickly by more hazardous, less effective, and low-cost solutions.... Initially we believed this was mostly due to low rig counts, but after a few meetings with some of our distributors they confirmed that on the few drilling rigs that were operating, they were going the least expensive option, without concern over how much product they had to use or whether the chemistry was clean or not. The rig operators said they still loved and preferred our products, but they were being given instructions to cut their costs on everything.
With that information in hand, and a target price, we quickly and relatively inexpensively developed MudWash 210 in a matter of a few weeks. We sent out the dozen or so pails of product to various rigs to get their feedback, and then based on that, we finalized a solution and proceeded to commercialize the product. Due to the nature of this market, to commercialize this product we had to supply a significant amount of product at no charge for distribution to the rigs, and in this case we had to invest much more heavily in marketing than we did in R and D in order to make this product a commercial success. We believe that incentives to help companies offset the sometimes significant costs of commercializing their new products would go a long way in de-risking efforts to bring new and clean technologies into the natural resources markets.
The first miss we wanted to talk about is AggreSol-CAP. Coal is shipped across North America by rail, and fugitive coal dust from the railcars poses not only a fire risk on the tracks, but also an unsightly environmental mess, especially in the winter. As a result, railcars loaded with coal must be sprayed with some type of capping solution that will bind the small dust particles to keep them in the railcars under extreme weather conditions and various dynamic stresses. This is typically a latex-based material that is very messy in its application, difficult to clean up, and hazardous to fish if it gets into the watershed.
We were working in southeast British Columbia to develop a lower cost, superior-performing capping agent for use on their railcars, and then expand that application to other locations across North America and globally. After significant R and D work, and development and testing in our own lab, the economics indicated a positive ROI, and we were ready to proceed with on-track testing. However, at about the same time coal prices collapsed and our customer pulled all their funding for this project. To this day, coal prices are still low, and we have not been able to get re-engaged in the project. We believe that if there were legislative guidance for adopting clean technologies when they are available, it would reduce the risk for the adopters and allow them to forge ahead even in difficult economic environments.
Finally, TerraSol was developed during the BP oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. We were approached by a U.S. company that was aware of our clean technologies. They were looking for a clean chemistry to help them clean up the soil contaminated by the spill. The product works very well, as you can see on the slide from the video, but it needs a mechanical component to really make it a commercially viable product for this type of application. We believe there should be some type of a trigger within the SR and ED program that automatically connects the SR and ED applicants with a technical adviser at the NRC to help connect compatible technology to companies.