September 20, 2000
Tathacus shares dive amid skepticism
Hydrogen-burning process questioned
By John Spears
Toronto Star Business Reporter
The air leaked out of Tathacus Resources Ltd. stock yesterday as investors took another look at the company that hopes to extract hydrogen from water and burn it in your furnace.
Tathacus shares slid back to $8.75 on the Canadian Venture Exchange yesterday after shooting up to $11.75 on Monday. The stock jumped to $8 last week, after months of not trading, from a previous price of $1.30.
Meanwhile, a company spokesperson refused to discuss the academic background of the researcher credited with developing the technology.
``In due time that background will be provided in greater detail,'' Leigh Clark of Tathacus said in a telephone interview from Calgary.
Tathacus is part of a joint venture with a private firm named Xogen Power Inc. Tathacus is also a shareholder of Xogen, and a number of Tathacus directors also sit on the Xogen board.
According to Tathacus, Xogen has developed a process of using electricity to separate hydrogen from oxygen in common tap water. A water molecule is made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.
Tathacus wants to use the process to produce hydrogen in your home, using it to power a specially designed furnace. It says a prototype furnace should be ready early next year.
The advantage of burning hydrogen is that it produces no greenhouse gases.
But Clark was reluctant to talk about either the process, or the qualifications of Stephen B. Chambers, who developed the process and is 29 per cent owner of Xogen.
Clark first asked to go off the record when asked about Chambers' scientific background. ``He's a very private guy,'' he explained.
When The Star refused to go off the record, Clark would say little more than Chambers has a Ph.D. - but wouldn't say from what university. He said his expertise is in antenna research.
A prospectus issued by Tathacus in August doesn't mention Chambers' Ph.D. The prospectus says Xogen's technology has been evaluated by a consulting firm, and by a professor at the University of Calgary. Part of the professor's report is confidential. He is now a shareholder of Xogen.
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`I just think (the Xogen process) doesn't make any sense. It's not consistent with the laws of thermodynamics as we know them.'
- James Wallace, U of T professor
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The two largest shareholders of Tathacus, each with 15.7 per cent, are the Six Nations Band Council of Ohsweken, and the Gitxsan and the House Groups, an aboriginal group in B.C. Tathacus also owns an oil and gas producing firm in Alberta.
Robert Morris, a professor of chemistry at University of Toronto, said it's not hard to break water into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity.
You can do it at home by connecting one end of each of two wires to opposite ends of a battery, and immersing the free ends in salt water. Tiny bubbles will form - hydrogen on one wire, oxygen and chlorine on the other, he said. It's called electrolysis.
The problem is that the energy required to separate the elements is more than the energy released by burning the hydrogen, he said.
It would make more sense to heat a house with electricity than to use the electricity to produce hydrogen, and then burn the hydrogen, he said.
The Tathacus prospectus claims that Xogen's technology has solved this problem. It says the new process uses ``power consumption levels that can be orders of magnitude lower than conventional electrolysis.''
Because the hydrogen will be used on the spot, it won't have to be stored or transported, it says.
James Wallace, professor in the electrical and mechanical engineering department at U of T, was also skeptical of Xogen's claim. ``I just think it doesn't make any sense,'' he said. ``It's not consistent with the laws of thermodynamics as we know them.''
He said many companies around the world have tried to solve the problem for decades, and none has come close to what Tathacus claims the Xogen process has achieved. |
