Oil and Gas Startups Podcast

0:00 What's going up going on digital wildcatters it's been a while since I've done a podcast. I've watched my intro never. Bosh my intro, but got a packed house today with perceptive sensor technologies.

0:11 We've got Earl, Jim and Jim. And so they made it really easy for me on the names. I love when I have multiple names. I'm considering you have neural changes named to Jim also. So we got to have

0:21 Jim cubed here. So guys, really excited to have you all here. We've got some equipment in the house. I love when we have shows where we have some equipment so we can show it off on a camera, but

0:31 real quick, before we get into the show, who wants to take the lead on giving me the two-minute pitch on what Perceptive is? I can do it. Cool. Perceptive sensors, we produce sensors that can

0:43 analyze liquids in real time. So we do that from the exteriors and NDT technology. We can look into a pipe or a tank and we can tell you it's 87 octane. It's diesel number two, or it could be a

0:54 combination of those two. And that's where we develop one product from that right now We have another one in the hopper. That probably comes out of the year. And that's more around the tank sort of

1:04 field. Technology was founded in a barbershop in Tucson, Arizona. And we developed it from the military and from looking for chemical weapons in Russia. Cool. Yeah, I heard the other gym talking

1:16 about that here. So we're gonna dive into that. And Jim, you're telling me that you're in town for a conference or all of y'all in town? Or some of y'all and he's saying, I know I talked to Earl

1:25 over here, he's Cajun. So I know where he's from But what about you guys? Yeah, I'm from Tucson, Arizona. That's from the company's base. And as Jim said, the technology actually came out of

1:39 the Defense Department, chemical weapons detection, that sort of thing. And eventually, drug enforcement got involved with it. And in Arizona, we have a lot of drug issues that come across the

1:49 border. And we found out about the technology, went and tied it up, brought it out, showed it to people in the oil and gas industry in Texas and they gave us a thumbs up. We went back and tied up

1:59 by the exclusive rights to five patents from the US government. We filed 80 cents, been awarded to over 25 on different applications. The technology is really foundational. You can do a lot of

2:09 things with real-time fluid identification. And the important thing that Jim mentioned is non-invasive. We don't have to cut a hole in a pipe or anything. We just mount on the outside. Yeah, so

2:19 let's peel this back a little bit and talk about, before we get into the application and oil and gas, I wanna talk about how this was invented as a chemical detection weapon in the military, and

2:33 you brought over this Pelican box over here. So when you pass that down the table real quick, I wanna have this take a look at it as you're telling the story, but

2:44 there we go. This is a portable

2:48 unit. So I'm gonna show this on camera. Let me, all right, there we are So you can see we have this portable computer here what I'm assuming is a scanner. So I'm about to check out some groceries

3:01 at HEB here. More of a wand. More of a wand has to be against something firm and then you could actually find out what's in there. Okay, yeah. So you're pressing this up against any tank or steel.

3:13 Does it have to be metal? No. 'Cause you said they're using it in drug, drug enforcement. Yeah, glass, plastic. Okay. All sorts of things. And actually that's what the FBI really wanted to

3:22 use it for is for security, so. Interesting I mean, I think I heard you telling John earlier before I got on the podcast about how this was used. Was it the Cold War when it was embedded? We

3:34 signed a treaty with Russia that gave us inspection rights on chemical weapons and the primary delivery mechanism for chemical weapons is artillery shells. And so we had the authorization under this

3:46 treaty to be able to go to Russia to go to their armories and then have tens of thousands of artillery shells inspect them.

3:53 How do you expect an artillery show without cutting it open to find out what the chemical agent is? And so the State Department went out to many of their national labs. And the one that's most

4:02 prevalent and active in chemical and biological and nuclear is a Pacific Northwest national labs. They've got about 4, 400 scientists and research associates up in the state of Washington. And they

4:13 were able to distinguish the different chemical agents, whether it's saring gas, mustard, whatever else. And then subsequent to that event, they were high-fiving each other They did that, and

4:22 we're happy to do that. The results, the FBI heard about it, put more money in it with the idea, did they get used it for detection of drugs, precursors to build drugs, that sort of thing for

4:33 drug interdiction. Yeah. And for a variety of reasons that stopped, that stopped development and it was sitting basically in a closet up in the state of Washington, we found out about it through

4:45 retired drug enforcement people that were in Southern Arizona. getting in here. It was through a barbershop. Is that what happened to me? Literally. In a barbershop,

4:56 getting a haircut and you just kind of hear it, you know, pillow talk? One of our other team members knows the barbers. So, you know, you give all your secrets to the bartender or whatever. In

5:05 this town, you tell your barber, you know, what's going on. And Billy found out about it. Billy Coleman. He was partners with Jim when a couple of other things Jim had some business over here

5:16 before. Renewable diesel and he sort of knew the business. And they sort of said, well, this, you know, oil and gas business, people end up stealing it. It's adulterated. There's other things

5:26 that happen with fluids. So maybe we could be evaluated with this instrumentation. Yeah, that's a it's pretty fascinating. You know, I think that there's

5:37 if you look at deep technologies that are invented, you know, there's tribal knowledge loss where, hey, you know, someone might have been aware of a technology and then that generation passes

5:46 away and lose knowledge, but then you have deep technology that just kind of sits in these silos. I was talking to someone the other day. I had a Phillips 66 and you're telling me the story of this

5:56 protocol is at the MQTT

6:01 protocol. I don't know, you guys, you guys, you'll probably know better than me, but anyways, Phillips 66 and then into this protocol for pipeline monitoring. And anyways, long story short,

6:13 this protocol is widely used now and like even Facebook uses it to build Facebook Messenger off of, but for years, people within that company had no idea that this technology even existed. And so I

6:25 think it's pretty, it kind of shows the opportunity that's out there, that these technologies exist in these silos. And

6:33 it's really about, hey, where can we find a commercial application for these? It might just be one conversation and a barbershop away from discovering it. And I think the, you know, this time

6:42 for me to jump in with my story. So these These guys, Jim and Jim, besides. you know, they had some preliminary talks to folks. They decided to go to a trade show. So they go to a trade show in

6:52 Florida that's mostly about storage things. Okay. And I've been speaking at this trade show and involved for years. And so as Jim likes to say, I always go to the back corner 'cause they put the

7:02 new guys in the back. You know, the people that paid a big bucks are sitting up front. Yeah. So I wander in the back and I see the worst trade show booth I've ever seen. Whoa, whoa, whoa. So

7:12 it's these two guys, the box with the gun looking thing. Yeah I've got three paint cans and I said, Hey, what are you gonna do? And I said, Oh, we can tell you this one's got water in it. This

7:22 one's got diesel. This one's got diesel and water. And I'm like, That's cool and everything, but I don't really have a lot of unlabeled paint cans, you know, lying around. But we talked and I

7:31 thought, Hmm. So then I said, Hey, what about the very top? I said, There's nothing there. And I said, Could you tell me that? And they were like, Go away. I went, No, seriously, could

7:39 you tell me? And they talked and they said, Yeah. And I said, I would buy that from you. And I was working at Kinder Morgan at the time Okay, very large. You know, and I had a need for it.

7:49 Let's just put that in. I had some young engineers with me. So I, I said, hey, go there and see if you see the same thing I see. And then we got to talk and as Jim likes to say, they, they,

7:59 they, they didn't know who kind of Morgan was. I thought it was, I thought it was kind of Morgan. They were, yeah, you know, I love, I love, I love the gold mark. And so, you know, so

8:11 anyway, so we worked together. And, you know, to be honest, so I, I gave them a laundry list of things Is that if you can do this, this, this, come see me thinking I never hear from these

8:21 guys again. Yeah. And a few months later, they show up in my office downtown and said, hey, we can do all that stuff. And I went, really? Anyway, so then we started prototyping things and

8:30 very cool. What was this? What year? This was 18, 19, probably 19. Okay, cool. Yeah. So, yeah. And so Earl threw us to the wolves. So we saw him in a nice, friendly manner. And then we

8:42 went out to a kind of facility because he was a little bit under the radar at this point. And he won a reality check. So he pulled in one of the older kinder person. And we set up a new, actually

8:55 we got a pipe and we stood it up on sides. So we just said we had pink cans. We can actually prove it out more of a prototype going through a large piece of steel. So we did that. We put diesel in

9:05 there. We proved that. And the guy said, Oh, okay. And he was the man of very few words. So then - The labs, right? The test labs, yeah. Leo, Leo Randall, Leo, all right. Leo's got it

9:15 worked his way up You know, 30 years from an operator and he was running the quality labs at the largest liquid terminal complex in North America. Yeah. So it's a big deal. Yeah. So we have the

9:27 three pig cans again. We do a little dog and pony show. And it's in a room very much like this. And Earl desserts us. He goes and sits way back in the room. So it's Leo, there's Billy, myself

9:37 and Jim, and we're having this conversation. He's like, Okay, so here's water, here's vinegar. We don't always walk around with flammable liquids. here's whatever, he's like, uh-huh. He sort

9:47 of gave us a knot and then he reaches down for a milk caddy of petroleum bottles and he slams it on the tail. He's like, okay, let's do this. Like wait a minute, they're glass. We just have to

9:56 recalibrate. So he looks at one and he's like, try that one. So Billy gets up. That's 87 octane and he doesn't say anything. Try this one. That's number two diesel. Okay, that's heating oil.

10:09 So boom, boom, boom, we hit him all. And then like number five or six, he's like, Billy's like, I think it's a premium, but I can't really tell if it's a premium. He's like, yeah, through

10:17 your little curve ball there. Had an additive in it, but he actually got it. That's awesome. So with that, I looked at early, he's like, just walk out, just put your head down and keep your

10:26 eyes down to the ground and walk out. And Leo, is this sort of shaking his head? He couldn't believe what we did, so. Yeah, so our past made a sensor real quick. Yeah, there you go. So let me

10:37 show everyone on camera what this thing looks like. So one, tell me what I'm holding. here. And then I want to talk about how the technology works. You know, I'm super curious, like, how does

10:50 it differentiate between? So that that is an early version. That's, that's, you know, it has been, that has been put on the field. But if you look, so you see the curved piece. Yeah. So that

11:00 would fit on. Imagine that's fit on. So a piece of pipe. Okay. Okay. And then what you're handling box that you're holding has the brains in it, essentially. Yeah. Okay And then the top there,

11:12 you can put it in tennis, so you can send them, say, their signal off. Got you. And what it does, that sensor, a little black thing on the back side there. Sure. Yeah. That's the sensor.

11:21 That sends an ultrasonic pulse through the steel. Okay. And just like with a handheld, essentially, you have to know how thick the steel is, and you send a pulse through and you kind of ignore

11:29 that piece. Yeah. And then there's a number of metrics, this is kind of our secret sauce, but there's a number of metrics we can use that helps identify the different liquids. So 87 octane looks

11:41 different than number two diesel.

11:47 and Jack Daniels looks different than - And gentlemen, Jack. And that our guys figured that out in front of you after you did report. Yeah, so it's not just oil and gas. It's okay, we've got a

11:55 project right now where they de-ice planes, these things called PEG, polyethylene glycol that

12:02 you put in. We can tell, and what they found out, what we found out through testing, which we didn't know to begin with, was if you have two liquids that you put 'em together that they don't

12:10 chemically react, we can tell you how much of, if we know what we're looking for, we can tell you how much of each. Oh, you can tell them a percentage. Of each, yeah. So, like, probably, on

12:19 an airport, when they start, it's 100. Well, then after deices, and it's less than 100, but if there's a point where if there's still, I don't know the number, but there's some number, 20

12:31 whatever, they can still use it again. But at some point, it's too diluted and they wanna dump it down the drain. Yeah. But we can tell them where that, we can tell them that it. Interesting.

12:40 And in the old and gas world, I was gonna say, let me stop you real quick, 'cause it's kind of fascinating like the whiskey analogy because it'd be impressive, like, oh, it can tell the

12:49 difference between whiskey and water and Coke, but you're like, no, it can actually tell the difference between different types of whiskey as well, which is - And water down whiskey. Maybe

12:58 somebody at 12 o'clock will fill it up again, and we could - What you're hitting on is exactly when the Pacific Northwest Labs was doing the work for the military and the FBI. They had an epiphany

13:09 moment that, and it's proven out to be exactly true. Every liquid has a unique acoustic fingerprint. As Earl said, you have multiple metrics, acoustic metrics, everything's temperature

13:21 compensated. So the magic that you know, or referred to is knowing what metrics to use, making sure we have a temperature compensation model set in. For us to add a liquid to our database, we

13:31 have to run it through the range of operating temperatures we see it at, and it creates curves, and it's extremely, extremely accurate. Yeah, so that's what I was gonna say is that you guys have

13:41 to go create this database with all of these inputs of, hey, this is the acoustic profile of this liquid and then you have to run it against a spectrum of different temperatures and variables and

13:53 then you preload that into this. We have a handful of non-patrolling products as well. We've got a whole bar over here. Let's start, yeah, running from the test. Wait, this is Johnny Walker red,

14:05 so the blue, somebody ripped you off But we have about 300 items in our database now and we keep adding them every week or two of that. Somebody comes like, if you gave me your soda, whatever

14:16 you're having, I would say, I don't know what it is, but we actually had a sample, put it in there, we'd come back and say, we don't have to be populated and get the profile on it. Yeah, in

14:24 fact, before I joined when I was still at Kinder, they came over to do a dog and pony show for some folks and they had brought some diesel. They had diesel in Arizona that they calibrated on Yeah,

14:37 or you can't go fly with these all. So they came over here and bought some of these. So yeah, and it didn't work and they were like, oh, well, it was wrong. Well, it was a private equity guy's

14:47 like, thank you very much. Why don't you come back when this works again, Jen, I'm like, really? No, trust me, it works. And I sort of knew this guy from my New York books. The stories of

14:55 your demos never working in front of investors is it's a story everyone has. But what happened, again, it's your learning is that there's an additive they put in Houston or air that they don't put

15:07 in Arizona, and our technology is so sensitive it was picking up that delta. So it was closed, but not, yeah, and that just is like, oh, this stuff is really accurate. We literally see if you

15:19 have different like 87 octane, Gregor gasoline, a lot of people make it. We actually see differences in the different refiners. Really? So that's interesting because like you always hear like,

15:32 you know, it's funny like mechanics, claim car she's on. Oh, it's bad gas. It's bad gas. And like, you never think like, it's like, it's just gas, you know, gas is gas. But I'm sure that

15:40 there's a huge quality component that goes into gas. Well, as we said earlier, we're not from the main founders of the company, we're not from oil and gas industry. And we really listened to

15:49 people like Earl came back to us and Ken and Morgan, they came up with three things they wanted us to do. One was the trans mix as the materials going through the pipeline to differentiate so they

15:59 can reduce their yield loss. Second thing they wanted was a tank alarm for the overfill and stuff like that. The third thing was actually working on loading racks at the trucks so you could verify,

16:11 they could verify and prove that what they put in the trucks going to the gas station is exactly what it's supposed to be. Because they didn't want to have problems with people come back and say I

16:19 had an issue. An issue could have been the tank truck that pulled up may have had something in the tank that was not competitive I don't know what it is, yeah.

16:31 I don't know what it's like to prove your quality and have record of that too and doing a scientific way, where you have a ledger of, hey, this is what we sent you. And yeah, which I think this

16:40 is like really,

16:42 you know, not understood by even people in the industry, but outside of the industry is just the,

16:49 there's so many different types of fuels and grades of oil and things of this nature. And I mean, it's super complex. And so being able to get insight into that is, I mean, that's a huge unlock

16:60 So the top number one that Jim mentioned was we look at trans mix. So maybe listeners don't understand what trans mix is. So there might be, I don't understand what trans mix is. So tell me. So

17:09 it'd be finished product materials, right? So your gasoline's or diesels, things like that. So they usually run on a pumping schedule, maybe from like in this area, there's Baytown and Exxon's

17:19 there. So for two days straight, they might push 87 octane behind that they'll push number two diesel. So there's going to be some sort of commingling of those fluids in between So I'm trying to

17:29 put my hands up here. So they see this much. You know 20 barrels and they just to be careful they'll cut out 50 barrels But yeah, we can see this in real time. We can see the transition from a

17:40 hundred percent of the gasoline going to 99 98 97 and watching the diesel coming from

17:47 1 2 3 So you can actually see it in real-time Processing as it has it's changing awesome. That's very cool I mean, it's already cool enough that you can you can differentiate You know just putting

17:57 it on there but to be able to see it flowing flowing by in real time is It's not just refined products. I mean, it's all kind of things But it we already talked about alcohols and things but yeah,

18:07 we've done some we did somebody sent us some blind test of crudals Yeah, and we can actually see differences in the different grades of crudals. Yeah. Yeah, so as I was getting at earlier is like

18:17 you have Different grades, you know, oils and yeah, I mean we it doesn't take we see a difference and it's not it's not like 50 You know like a 50 API to 40 we can see like 50 versus if you wanted

18:31 to I mean, it's much closer Yeah, yeah, so yeah, you can see them much more accurate discrepancy between them. That brings me to my next question. You know, y'all are, obviously this has

18:42 applications for all industries that use fluids, but in oil and gas, you know, we've been talking heavily about downstream and hen refining, which makes perfect sense. Had you guys started taking

18:55 this out into upstream applications as well for exploration and production companies But to define, are we taking it out? We do have somebody who's taking it and their imagination has run wild on

19:08 them and good. And they've used it in downstream and we want to work with them more. So yeah, it's good application. We've also, we've done, we have a project right now with produced water,

19:19 which is an upstream application. Because what happens, especially like West Texas, New Mexico, you get all this produced water where they had to do something with it. You give it to companies

19:28 that then take it, Clean it up a little bit and re-inject it. Well, there's specs on that. Yeah. And occasionally, like frequently, people will send them garbage or stuff they're not supposed

19:40 to send them. But since it's all cold mingle together, it's very difficult for them to decide. Got lots of saltwater disposal bros that listen to this podcast. And so that's, you know, that's

19:48 what I was thinking about. I was in West Texas two summers ago to show, to talk to somebody about it. One difference with the upstream, that part of the upstream, is their

20:02 tolerance for spending money is a little different than like the refiners or the actual drillers. Yeah. So, yeah. But we actually,

20:11 I have a project right now to go put two units out. Nice. West Texas, New Mexico. Yeah, and they're just looking for like gross changes. You know, we're not down to the parts per million,

20:21 we're not telling you, you know, it's potable water. But like, if somebody sends them a slug of garbage, we see that. Well, that's what they want to know and how much oil too because if there's

20:30 a lot of oil. there's some oil in there, obviously, if there's a lot, then they want to divert that over the tank, let it settle out and then sell it. Yeah, they want to pull that skim oil out.

20:39 Yeah, you know, the water issue in West Texas, I mean, it's a huge issue. And actually have a deep belief that the future of water technology in the world will be solved out in West Texas. And

20:52 then that knowledge and technology will be exported around the world. And, you know, you look at, I was talking to, I was on this round table meeting with a couple of VMP executives and the mayor

21:04 of Midland and Senator Ted Cruz, and they were talking about all the oil field theft that's out there. And, you know, a

21:13 lot of saltwater disposals are kind of part of that ecosystem. And so being able to track fluids is really top of mind for everyone. So yeah, there's just kind of all kinds of crazy applications

21:28 out when you actually put in this thing Um, Do the units come in one size? Like you said, you're deploying a couple of units, like are these all, are they custom to the application? They're

21:38 custom to the diameter of the pipe, for pipe applications. And so for really small pipes, we need to use a curved sensor. Yeah. For larger pipes, we can use, I say a large 12 inch on up

21:53 typically, we can use a flat sensor 'cause you get a curvature is not - Got you. Got you. Unless I get like, you know, four and a half inches or so And so, and

22:02 then for larger pipes, largest we've done so far as 36, we've actually, in larger sizes, we actually put two sensors on. One on both sides of

22:13 the pipe, so you're passing everything. Yeah. Like that one is just going, it's bouncing to the other side and coming back. We can, it works, but you get more data if you have two. Got you,

22:22 yeah. Yeah, so, so when you do small pipes, you usually try to optimize to have two on each one or you just say, hey, it's good enough. was worth one. It depends on the application. Gotcha.

22:34 And it also depends on what people are looking for, because as we said, we have different metrics that we can look at and some metrics for two different liquids are the same or very similar, but

22:45 then that second metric is way different. Gotcha. If you start, but you know, some, even at two, it's kind of like if we want 87 and 87 and a half octane gasoline, those are pretty close

22:55 together. Yeah. Yeah. And we're not a GC, we're not doing, but if we start adding more, turning more of our metrics on, you know, and it's, one of the differences, and we had this discussion

23:05 with everybody, we are, you know, we have units, and obviously there's a sensor there, but the magic is not that box that you're got in front of you. The magic is taking the data and figuring

23:16 out what it means. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's not like we're selling a widget per se. We're not selling a shovel to somebody. Yeah. It's, it's, and it's called my analyzers or whatever, You

23:28 know, it's kind of this weird middle ground there. It's not just a sensor, it's not just software. It's kind of a merging of the two, which I love. I mean, I love when you have the inception of

23:39 software and hardware. So let's talk about that a little bit. You know, what does it look like? Let's just say someone, let's take a persona, someone in saltwater disposal is like, hey, this

23:50 is really interesting. I want to deploy this. So

23:54 they get their sensor on out there. Now what, where is that data feeding to? You guys have a software platform that it feeds into? Are you just giving a raw data dump to the operator? What's that

24:05 look like? Basically, the other way we've set the units up is all of our units communicate back to, you can call it an edge server or we call it a telemetry engine. Basically it's a unit has three

24:17 redundant servers in it. So it's high availability. If one goes out, you pop it in out. But basically after we collect the data from the device in the field, This is like an intelligent. data

24:27 collection device goes back to the server, we do further analysis and come back and tell you this number two diesel. Or if the application is just tell me if this product's on spec or not, we have

24:38 people come back and say, Look, we expect ethanol in this line all the time, if it's not, give us a warning. And so the eventual vision and neural has been sharing with us is terminals,

24:50 facilities can have these units all over the place. And so you know it's in every pipe going everywhere.

24:58 And major development for us would be a flow meter, acoustic flow meter that's really accurate. The ones that are out there today aren't that accurate. We feel with all the information we're

25:06 getting on the fluid, we can develop a very accurate flow meter. When you put a flow meter, accurate one, together with something identifies the liquid, then you've got a digital manifest for

25:16 custodial transfers, all sorts of applications Yeah. Yeah. But to your, back to your question, the typically what we do, because nobody believes us. I didn't believe, you know, I didn't

25:26 believe these guys were on it. You know, and then, you know, it's kind of like the old slide. There used to be this hair plug thing about, you know, I'm not just a, you know, investor, I,

25:33 I'm a, I'm a, I'm a user. Yeah, now I'm part of it. But so what we do is, and we can do it. And when I was still a kinder, I told them, you need to be as agnostic as possible, because

25:43 different people communicate, you know, some people love wireless, some don't, whatever. So we have a number of, we've built in a number of options. So for kind of proof of concept, we put it

25:54 on there, we can even that little hole on the end there is actually we can, we can put batteries on there so that, so that you don't have to run conduit and cable if you don't want to, yeah, to

26:03 start. Yeah. And then we can do it wirelessly. We can literally do it with cell phones so that you can see that you can see it. We have an interface online in the cloud, whatever, whatever the

26:14 cloud is, but you can actually see if you, if you have a unit on, you can see your data in real time. Got you. Which for most people is kind of like watching paint dry, because, you know, it's

26:24 just a line Not so far. Not so far so. Sit there and watch

26:30 that. But what we do, we're collecting all that data and you can go backwards in time. So like, you could, because one of the issues with the produced water is they say, you know, during the

26:36 day, this stuff doesn't happen 'cause they're taking samples, but there's no way there at night. Yeah. And so they, or trucks are being offloaded at night or? Yeah. But you can then go back and

26:46 look and go, oh, well, okay, at 230, somebody slipped me in Mickey and it's like, oh, Joe was the one that was here. I know, I know who did it now Yeah, and so that's where, so, yeah. And

26:57 then what I think for an operational purpose, most people are gonna then take it, ultimately they're gonna take our data and integrate it into their SCADA system or their DCS system or whatever.

27:07 Yeah. But that's a, you know, they gotta be comfortable with it first and then they gotta realize, oh, yeah, this is, this really works. Yeah, deploy it, see it where I can, and then once

27:16 it works, you know, get it tied. It can be a toss out. I mean, all people have different needs. So we have one on a pipeline, which is just distill it. going through their heating oil, things

27:27 like that. So it's very important for them to keep jet 100 clean. They don't want any of the fringes on the other because you're 30, 000 feet. You don't want diesel or kerosene going into that.

27:37 So they wanna make sure that's 100. Boeing already has enough trouble. Yeah, but they don't need more problems. So in a case like that, they cut out, they're supposed to cut out five minutes of

27:47 waste. They cut out eight minutes of waste and something like that. So on this one pipeline, a one minute is 21, 000 gallons That's enough to fill a pool in your backyard. So we can improve upon

27:58 that for a minute. That's great. Yeah. The other pipeline articulate the volume. Yeah, yeah. And the other pipeline is all gasoline and we have a certain amount of things in our database and

28:13 things are going by and we're like, Girl, what's that? And Earl's like, That's a subgrade octane. Like, Okay, what's subgrade octane? Well, obviously it's something 87 below, like we've

28:22 never seen that. you're not gonna get that. So we sort of found it, we put in our database, so it was going through the pipeline, we analyze it, we labeled it, it's gone there. Yeah. So in

28:32 this pipeline - So if you discover, just and this is kind of a question of how you all operate, like if you discover something that was a subgrade octane fuel, now that you've seen it, you know,

28:43 are you all able to go build a signature to that so that the next time that you see it, you can identify it. Exactly, exactly. And we went back to the operating set. Was this upgrade? Yeah,

28:52 that was upgrade. Was it between one o'clock and four o'clock it? Yeah, it was, so. Okay. So we did that. Yes. But this pipeline, when you push, there's a shoulder season. So in April, you

29:04 have to transition from winter blends to summer blends. So all of a sudden, yeah, there could be 25 different gasoline's in it. Yeah. So we were seeing a lot come by where we've been analyzing

29:14 and tagging a lot of things recently. Yeah. That was pretty fascinating to, you know, think about the different applications for this. It's really funny to hear the story of how it goes from cold

29:27 war technology to drug busing to hearing about it in a barber shop to now, you know, getting people like Earl believing in it, in oil and gas applications, you know, for y'all what's, what other

29:42 industries are y'all looking at applying this to outside of oil and gas?

29:47 The chemical

29:50 food processing and logistics is probably the largest. If you take this technology and you integrate it and say an ISO container or a tote and put GPS on it, you'd be able to tell at all times where

30:03 something is, what it is, is it on spec, how much is there in volume and how much it weighs. Yeah. Because once we know what the liquid is, if, for instance, if you have a tote like a 400

30:14 gallon tote and you put our unit on there, you identify the liquid. We know that the all-ay information about it, including the density and weight. And with the second transducer on the bottom,

30:25 so if they know how the velocity of the acoustic wave is going through to four decimal places, we can get the fill level within two decimal places. At that point in time, we've got a volume, we

30:35 know the material, we can give you the weight. So you could have a virtual manifest anywhere. This is, you know, this heating oil, or a petroleum, whatever. Just saying about like, you know,

30:44 like real cars. Think about it in your warehouse, knowing what everything's out there that I would do a physical count. Does it make sense? Like, I don't know how much these costs are what

30:53 y'all's business model is, but like, you know, on a rail car, on how many rails you have on a typical car, but does it make sense to have like, every single car

31:02 outfitted? One of these, ultimately, yes. You know, today, I mean, we're still, you know, we're a small startup, and we've, one of the challenges, we come up all these, we were at an open

31:12 house yesterday, talking to another startup, and there's some synergies between the two, and we're sitting there with a PhD guy, and we're talking back and forth, I think we come up with two or

31:20 three more patterns, you know. ideas, but the reality is, you know, it takes time and money to do that. So that's the way they got to pick a path and go. But we can, as Jim said, if we if we

31:31 put this on the bottom, slightly the big storage tanks, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, horizontal tanks that are elevated. Yeah, if we put our unit on the bottom, we can tell you precisely how

31:39 much is in it and what it is. Interesting. That's a there's other devices that can tell you that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the other thing that is, you know, as Jim's pointed out, we don't have

31:50 to tap into the steel and in our world of, you know, we don't want any leaks or any potential sources or ESG stuff. So the fact that we're doing it all from the outside is is is a definite positive.

32:02 Yeah, a lot of real quick before before we wrap this up, let me dive into that. He made a comment about if it's a horizontal tank and you come out on the bottom. I have a few friends that I was

32:13 thinking about that are in downstream storage and, you know, have friends with chemical toads or oil tanks. And so can this be applied to tanks if they're vertical or no? Yeah. Yeah. No, we can

32:31 now from a level standpoint, we can't get on the bottom of a big tank. Yeah, exactly. Tanks are kind of my one of my things. We've got the tank guy here. He sits on a few API. Well, his

32:41 nickname is the Tank Whisper.

32:45 Earl, the Tank Whisper. He has his business cards, I love it I love it, but the original idea back with the worst trade show booth and the paint cans, my idea was for an alarm on a tank because

32:57 about every 3, 500 times, somebody around the world fills a tank, they put too much in it. In fact, the state of Texas just passed a new law last year, SB 900, which now mandates more

33:08 protection on 36, 000 tanks in the state of Texas that weren't previously under it And one of the things it does is references an API document, which I happen to sit in for 20 years, I'm a chairman

33:20 of it at the moment. And so obviously you put an alarm on, you don't do it. So we have a tank alarm that you can literally, and we met it with magnets. So there's a welding, it's wireless, it's

33:30 battery, so you don't have to run a conduit or cable. Now what kind of an off-the-shelf use, kind of like doctor's prescribed stuff that's not on the, but our device, we've done this in the field,

33:41 like a crude tank. If you move hand move, it's not practical. Well, if you hand move it, we can take where the solid bottom is, we can take where the sludge is, we can take where the water is,

33:50 we can take where the oil is, because we get a different signal. And so we, the mad scientist, and I'm not the mad scientist. I know all the problems in the industry, but if we put a series on

34:02 the side of a tank, we can get a level. Gotcha. Gotcha. And so that's kind of ultimately where I want to go, because then it's all from the outside, you don't have to go to the top, open

34:11 anything up, weld it, do anything. And there's existing technology and devices that do that, but they break, you know, and in a lot of facilities. the device itself is relatively cheap, but

34:23 running power and conduit, that's very, that's great. I know facilities have hundreds of tanks, they have nothing on them. Yeah, yeah, and so - Yeah, just the infrastructure alone is - Yeah.

34:36 And we can be wireless, so that's a big plus for us, potentially. Got you. Well, it was a

34:43 super cool stuff, guys. Appreciate y'all coming in and showing it to us. If someone's listening to the show and they want to check y'all out, what's the website? Where can they find y'all? You

34:54 can find us on wwwpercepticensorscom or go into LinkedIn. You can probably find us there. Find you guys there. Find y'all at the next local crawfish boil. Yeah. You got some crawfish. And I am

35:04 here in Houston. If anybody wants to talk in person, I'm happy to show up and talk to them. Cool, man. Awesome. Well, appreciate y'all coming in. If y'all enjoyed this show, make sure to

35:13 share it with a friend. Leave us some comments, some reviews. Reach out to these guys, the great group of guys, building some cool stuff, and we will catch you on the next show.