Environment committee  The dilbit goes into the pipeline up to the upgrader. All of our testing, with the collaboration of the oil sands industry partners, has been.... They want us to come in with a process that can be easily integrated into their present operations. We'll give you a feed stream, which is our tailings, you process it, and what we want back from you is a spec product that we can go ahead and tie into our pipeline going to the upgrader.

Environment committee  It's quality dilbit that goes into their upgrader.

Environment committee  It's a completely enclosed system. It's all under nitrogen purge, completely enclosed. It's enclosed, stainless steel, finished.

Environment committee  Okay. Our mixer is essentially off the shelf. It was patented in 1876. It's very robust, it's proven, and it does the job extremely well, and 100% mixing efficiency is obtained in less than 60 seconds. The company that manufactures it, the OEM, is over 485 years old, so they know what they're doing.

Environment committee  Those jars I brought probably are the best visual explanation you can get that the clays and the sand will not adhere to the bitumen coating, and that's because of the minimum free energy level of the bitumen on the bead. There's not enough energy in the hydrocarbon coating to adhere to the soil particles.

Environment committee  Industry is starting to take a serious look at external technologies that they are not developing themselves within their corporate structure. They like to own the technologies that they use. Secondly, they have a certain scaling-up process. When you take a technology from an incubation stage and ramp it up to a commercial deployment stage, you have to be able to handle large volumes.

Environment committee  Yes. What we intend to do, on the tailings stream at the end of the pipe, between the plant and the tailings pond, is set up an off-line facility that would take in that tailings stream. It's very hot. It's about 75°C, 80°C. Some streams are 50°C to 60°C. There's a lot of heat there that we don't require.

Environment committee  Oil spills, exactly.

Environment committee  We've been developing this technology for 14 years. We did some validation tests at CANMET in 2002, 2003 and 2004 with SNC Lavalin, the University of Alberta and others, and the results were conclusive. That encouraged us to continue, to involve oil sands operators in a pilot project to take the next step.

Environment committee  Exactly. We've reached an agreement with one operator. We're going to develop a project and they will be taking part in a test protocol this fall.

Environment committee  We'll be able to know whether the engineering was well designed by people like those at SNC Lavalin.

Environment committee  The methane source in the tailings ponds consists of organics. We're talking about bitumen and naphtha, which are lost during the processes. If you remove the organics, in this case the hydrocarbons, there's nothing to digest, no biodegradation; it's comparable to a sand pit.

Environment committee  We don't use any water; we use the product that is to be processed. We take the product; we add beads. This is a technology based on the laws of nature; it's basic. The hydrocarbons migrate onto the beads. They stay there and there is no [Inaudible—Editor]. They can stay there for months, years; no [Inaudible—Editor] occurs.

Environment committee  The sand falls off and it's clean.

Environment committee  Yes.