Eco-technology stock: Bubbles Fuel Investor Bargain |
Seair Inc. has caught on to winning eco-technology
by Fabrice Taylor
Tiny bubbles is, of course, the name of a cheesy song by Hawaiian crooner Don Ho. But it’s also a simple concept that might revolutionize the way we treat the ever-growing problem of waste water, from sewage to pulp and paper to the oil sands. If successful, the concept – which is being developed by Edmonton-based Seair Inc. (TSXV:SDS) – will make investors a lot of money.
The trick to treating water and other liquids is to diffuse gas into it, generally oxygen, ozone or CO2. The molecules or atoms in these gases bind to the waste and separate it from the water. If you’ve ever driven by a sewage treatment plant, you’ve noticed that the waste water is churned in order to expose it to the air. The idea is to add oxygen to it to speed up the cleaning process.
Industrial waste water is the same. Many forms of treatment involve adding gas to it. But Seair has made an amazing breakthrough that dramatically improves the way the gas is diffused into the liquid and, therefore, the speed and efficiency with which these molecules can do their work. The secret? Tiny bubbles.
Small bubbles – and by small we mean five microns – have important advantages over bigger ones. First and foremost, larger bubbles tend to rise to the surface, being lighter than the liquid. That means that a lot of the gas you want to diffuse into the water or liquid instead dissipates into the atmosphere as the bubbles rise to the surface and pop.
Seair’s technology involves using very small bubbles. Because of a force called Brownian motion, which is more powerful than the buoyancy of small bubbles, the bubbles stay in solution, allowing for better gas absorption.
Another plus to small bubbles is that they have a greater surface area for a given volume. In other words, a big bubble with the same volume of gas as 100 smaller ones takes up less surface area. That means less absorption.
And there’s another plus to these bubbles: they tend to electrostatically repel each other. That means they spread out throughout the liquid which, again, leads to better transfer into the liquid.
The upshot of this superior technology is lower costs and smaller footprints. Seair’s diffusion towers use next to no inputs and they’re small, meaning they can be installed almost anywhere. When expensive gases, such as ozone, are required, the system’s superior efficiency uses less of them, saving money.
And where do the units go? The company has a fleet of portable units that are used in drilling camps throughout Western Canada to treat the waste water. It’s also used to treat residential sewage near golf courses, which can use the treated water on their grounds. And they’re currently used in the pulp and paper industry.
But there are more and much bigger potential applications for the technology which, if they are fully proven out, will put Seair into the big leagues of treatment and make investors rich.
That opportunity, opportunities more accurately, is in the oil sands, which are in desperate need of innovative ways to treat water.
First, there’s the water that has to be taken out of the ground in order to mine. If this water isn’t removed, an oil sands mine would quickly become a lake as ground water seeped into the hole. So producers dig wells and pump it out. But the water often can’t just be released into the environment because it’s tainted with sulphides. The water needs to be exposed to oxygen in order to oxidize these chemicals.
As things stand, producers with this problem, such as Syncrude, are forced to dig very large ponds and pump air into them. This is expensive but more importantly it takes up a lot of real estate. That means less area devoted to mining, and given that site changes happen often, such non-productive areas are a major inconvenience.
Seair’s technology can be added to the wells that pump the water out without the need for big ponds. In fact, Syncrude has tested the technology and found that it worked very well. It even reported its findings at a recent science conference – and it’s rare for a big company to endorse the technology of an upstart. So the company’s claims look real. That means revenues from this application could be close.
An even bigger breakthrough would come if Seair could bear out the notion that it can help oil sands producers remove naphthenic acids from tailing water and lower its pH level. The upshot of such a success would be to accelerate the tailings process and in the case of lowering the pH, the process would involve using CO2 – in fact, if Seair’s innovation was used to treat all the water, it would use up all the CO2 produced by the industry. You can bet that producers would pay a healthy price for that service.
Seair earns revenues and these are climbing. But what will really move the needle is applying its technology to these much bigger problems. I think there’s a good chance that it will work given what the field tests are saying. If so, this stock, cruising around a buck, is a no-brainer because future revenues are so big relative to the company’s total market value today that it’s hard to even imagine it.
Fabrice Taylor is the Prairie Trader. He is an award-winning journalist and equity analyst.
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