Item 1. Business
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Introduction
We design and develop technologies that have been shown to significantly improve key performance characteristics of industrial combustion systems, including emission and operational performance, energy efficiency, safety and overall cost-effectiveness. We believe that our patented ClearSign Core™ technology can enhance the performance of combustion systems in a broad range of markets, including the energy (upstream oil production and down-stream refining), institutional, commercial and industrial boiler, chemical, and petrochemical industries. Our ClearSign Core technology, which is our primary technology, uses either a porous ceramic structure or metal flame holder device held at a distance from the injection planes of a burner to significantly reduce flame length and achieve low emissions without the need for external flue gas recirculation, selective catalytic reduction, or high excess air systems. To date, our operations have been funded primarily through sales of our equity securities. We have earned nominal revenue since inception in 2008.
Our combustion technology has been successfully deployed in commercial projects such as down-stream refining and upstream oil production. These applications include both our process burner and boiler burner technologies. Our process burner technology is able to operate in high-intensity multiple burner industrial applications at sites that are required to meet low air pollutant emissions. Our boiler burner technology, which has been proven to achieve ground-breaking low air pollutant emissions, has been deployed in the US and is currently undergoing commercialization in China. Due to the “zero tolerance” SARS-COV-2 virus (“coronavirus” or “COVID-19”) regulations enacted by Chinese authorities during 2022, our commercialization efforts in China were significantly delayed.
We believe that combustion equipment utilizing ClearSign Core technology is more effective and cost-efficient than current industry-standard air pollution control technologies, and can reduce NOx down to the levels required by new stringent emission regulations. NOx is a regulated greenhouse gas pollutant comprised of nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide. These current technologies include selective catalytic reduction devices (SCRs), low- and ultra-low NOx burners, external flue gas recirculation systems and other similar technologies. Such air pollution control systems are widely used in places within our current target markets such as in petroleum refining and petrochemical process heaters, large-scale once through steam generators (OTSGs), enclosed flares, institutional commercial and industrial boilers and other similar equipment. We believe that our ClearSign Core technology can provide value to our customers not only by helping them meet current and possible future legislative mandates to reduce pollutant emissions, but also by improving operating efficiency and increasing overall return on investment.
Based on the operating data we have obtained from our installed products, burners utilizing ClearSign Core technology can provide increased heat transfer efficiency as compared to other emission reducing technologies. This is consistent with the physics of heat transfer and the mechanisms by which the technology functions. The reported increased heat transfer efficiency may potentially result in cost savings in the low to mid-single digit percentage range for burners employing our technology. We believe that these potential costs savings could produce an extremely attractive pay-back period for an investment in ClearSign Core technology-based burners. In addition, because the flame volumes in heaters utilizing ClearSign Core technology are typically small, heaters using our technology are expected to operate at a lower cost, have increased productivity, and require less maintenance and downtime compared to heaters that operate with enlarged flames produced by traditional low NOx burners. The flames in a ClearSign Core system are established from a predominantly premixed stream of fuel, combustion air and flue gasses stabilized on a downstream structure that promotes turbulence and ignition with minimal “bulking up”. In comparison, flames resulting from the traditional legacy process of slow mixing of the fuel and air, and dilutive inert flue gasses have a much larger size. With a lower volume flame in a ClearSign Core system, surfaces in the heater or boiler experience less touching by the flame and it is anticipated that our systems can virtually eliminate flame impingement. Our technology also enables burners to function better in tightly spaced heaters compared to the flames of traditional low NOx burners. Most importantly, using our technology has the potential to decrease process downtime required during installation compared to retrofits utilizing the legacy technology of SCRs or flue gas recirculation systems.
We are also designing and commercializing a range of sensing products called the ClearSign Eye TM for two potential markets. The primary addressable market is similar to that of our ClearSign Core technology, although not limited to regions requiring emissions reduction. The flame sensing products are applicable to all installed burners that use a pilot for ignition, including in markets and regions beyond those where reducing emissions is a high priority. Like our burner technology, our burner sensing
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technology is being developed to provide convenient replacement and retrofit solutions for existing equipment as well as for inclusion in newly built equipment.
The secondary potential market for our sensing technology is outside of the typical combustion industry and includes transportation industries. While use of this fundamental technology in applications intended for transportation markets is proven, the development and refinement of specific products, obtaining the certifications required for commercial deployment and establishing an efficient manufacturing source and channels to market will take some time, and we cannot assure that these goals will be achieved. We believe that the opportunities for application of our sensing technology in the transportation market are global and of great value, but it will also take longer to commercialize products targeted for this market for the reasons stated above.
Overall, our sensing technologies could provide future diversification as well as the opportunity for continued business expansion and growth beyond the maturation of our combustion-related businesses.
Our Industry
The combustion and emissions control systems markets are significant, both with respect to the wide array of industries in which the systems are used and the amount of capital spent installing and upgrading the systems. Combustion systems are used to provide heat for many different industrial and commercial processes, including boilers, petrochemical process heaters, and waste disposal systems. In order to maximize energy efficiency while keeping pace with regulatory guidelines for air pollution emissions, operators of combustion systems are continually installing, maintaining, and upgrading a variety of costly process control, air pollution control and monitoring systems. Although we believe that there are many potential markets for our ClearSign Core technology, to date we have limited the introduction of this technology to petroleum refining process heaters, energy infrastructure process heaters, boilers for steam and hot water generation, boilers for building heating systems, and enclosed flares. We have initially targeted these markets for various reasons, such as, but not limited to: (i) environmental regulations imposed on these markets, (ii) total available market size, (iii) this technology being the most readily adapted to the needs of these industries and (iv) management experience and expertise.
Our initial target markets center on the energy sector, including downstream oil refineries through the use of process heaters and boilers as well as upstream crude oil production through the use of Once Through Steam Generator (OTSGs) and wellhead enclosed flares. We believe operators in our domestic target markets are under pressure to meet current and proposed federal, state and local pollution emissions standards. The standards applicable to our target markets have been developed over the past 50 years with broad political input. Due to the localized effects of poor air quality, we expect these standards to continue to become more stringent regardless of political leadership. As an illustration, air pollution emission standards are most stringent in the states of California and Texas, which historically have had leadership from different political parties. We believe this to be the case in the U.S. and worldwide in most major developed and developing countries. As a result, these standards are a significant driver for our development and sales efforts. We believe that our ClearSign Core technology can provide a unique, cost-effective pollution control solution for operators in comparison to known competing products.
In the U.S., emissions standards largely emanate from the Clean Air Act, which is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and regulates six common criteria air pollutants, including ground-level ozone. These regulations are enforced by state and local air quality districts as part of their compliance plans. As a precursor to ground-level ozone, NOx is a pollutant that is regulated by local air quality districts in order to achieve the EPA limits. The 8-hour ground-level ozone regulations have been reduced from 80 parts per billion (ppb) in 1997, to 75 ppb in 2008, and 70 ppb in 2015, with the requirement of realizing these levels approximately 20 years following the year of legislation.
We have noted that local air quality districts designated by the EPA as “severe non-attainment zones” in California and Texas have undertaken a review of their air pollutant emissions regulations. These reviews are ongoing, in most regions, but two important regions have recently amended their local regulations to improve air quality. In December of 2020, the San Joaquin Valley region of California revised its regulations to require significant reductions in target NOx emissions from boilers, steam generators and process heaters. The greater Los Angeles area also revised its regulations in November of 2021. Under these revised regulations, it substantially reduced target emissions for process heaters, boilers and other similar equipment in accordance with a new and comprehensive Best Available Retrofit Control Technology (BARCT) analysis, which we believe will result in an increased demand for our services and products.
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In addition, new regulations are starting to be adopted with respect to the NOx emissions of enclosed ground flares, which historically have not been viewed as a source of NOx emissions or subject to the same level of regulation. We believe that our ClearSign Core technology is well-suited to address the challenges faced by oil producers and other industries in complying with current and predicted future local air emission standards. There are multiple ClearSign Core flare applications now operational in California with NOx emissions below the levels required by new regulations.
In addition, we believe that current emissions standards in Europe, the Middle East, parts of Asia and Canada will continue to become stricter as these jurisdictions seek to achieve cleaner air. Existing and new emissions standards in such jurisdictions may create additional market opportunities for us. To date, we have one installation operating in the refinery of a major global oil refiner in Europe.
The current environmental impetus to reduce CO2 emissions has created an interest in burner technology that can use hydrogen as a fuel source. Because hydrogen burns at a higher temperature than most other fuel gasses, it tends to create more NOx emissions. ClearSign Core burners have demonstrated the ability to burn fuels with up to 80% hydrogen while still controlling NOx emissions to meet required regulatory levels. We believe that we can extend the capability of our ClearSign Core technology to burn “pure” hydrogen fuel.
Our Proprietary Technology
ClearSign Core Burner Technology
The name “ClearSign Core” was adopted to describe the inclusion of ClearSign’s burner technology in the products of original equipment manufacturers (OEM). Including our technology in OEM burner products enables us to leverage our technology by providing OEMs with the ability to offer a new product range with our technologies’ unique capabilities and differentiated product performance.
Our ClearSign Core burner technology consists of an industrial burner body and a downstream flame stabilizing structure made of either porous ceramic or metal. When the unreacted mixture of gaseous fuel and air is directed at the flame stabilizing structure, the mixture ignites and the flame forms either within or immediately downstream from the structure itself. Because the fuel and air have more time to become a homogeneous mixture, NOx-forming hot spots and chemistry typically produced by such hot spots is reduced. In addition, the mixing and combustion propagating from the flame-stabilizing structure results in a dramatically shorter flame. The ability to modify the flame stabilizing structure enables a high level of control over the flame shape for optimization in a wide range of different applications. For example, we believe our ClearSign Core products, without any external fans or associated power, can significantly reduce the harmful emission of NOx to levels of 5 ppm or below, depending on the application. The shorter flame in a ClearSign Core product can also potentially allow a furnace to operate at a higher capacity. We believe that heaters using the ClearSign Core will be able to remain in operation for an extended time before the need for maintenance as its flame structure and heat transfer profile minimize the possibility of flame impingement, reduce the likelihood of carbon deposits forming on the inside surfaces of the process tubes (coking) and reduce the likelihood of process tube failure all while operating with enhanced thermal efficiency.
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Refinery and Petrochemical
Heater Technology
Boiler Technology
ClearSign Core Plug & Play Burners
Our ClearSign Core Plug & Play burners provide a simplified, pre-engineered and standardized direct burner replacement for traditional refinery process heaters. We believe that this product minimizes the customized engineering associated with retrofits and lends itself to mass production. The product was designed to enable quick and easy installation in single burner or multi-burner heaters or furnaces. We believe that the simplicity of the actions required to retrofit refinery process heaters with the ClearSign Core Plug & Play, and the potential ability to install the ClearSign Core Plug & Play will potentially contribute to demand for our ClearSign Core Plug & Play burners.
ClearSign Core Boiler Burner Technology
Our ClearSign Core technology for boiler burners is essentially the same as our technology for process burners but with different component details. Boiler burners have a different orientation and internal chamber dimensions, operate with a relatively high combustion air pressure, and, in the case of small fire tube boiler burners, have a lower fuel gas pressure. Our go to market strategy of incorporating the ClearSign Core technology into a typical OEM process burner is the same as for our boiler burners.
ClearSign Core Flaring Burners
Our ClearSign Core flaring technology incorporates the same mechanisms as our burner technology, namely directing the fuel gas (typically waste gas), into an air stream with that air and gas mixture forming a flame stabilized downstream on a flame stabilizing structure. This technology has been configured into standard modular designs that can be used individually, or in combination, to provide a flare product with extremely low NOx emissions. We have designed standardized flare configurations with standard firing capacities that can be combined in varying quantities to produce flares with different firing rates.
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ClearSign Eye™ Flame Sensor
The ClearSign Eye™ flame sensor is an electrical flame sensor for industrial applications. Unlike the traditional technology, called “flame rods”, the ClearSign Eye sensing electrodes do not need to make contact with the flame. We are continuing to pursue “first adopter” installation opportunities for this patent pending sensing technology. We have multiple options open to us as channels to market, one of which includes manufacturing the sensors ourselves as an OEM and selling them to customers either directly or indirectly through intermediaries, and another being licensing. We believe our sensing technology is valuable because it potentially provides a very reliable alternative or replacement technology for critical industrial burner safety equipment. The currently available flame sensors are unreliable and require frequent maintenance. Our flame sensors can potentially be used with other combustion equipment such as flares, thermal oxidizer burners and boiler burners.
Our sensing technology can detect the capacitance of a flame while being physically outside of the flame envelope. As a result, our sensors can be easily retrofitted into existing burner technology. In addition, because the entire sensor probe can be positioned in a cool region, the ClearSign Eye can be manufactured with electrodes that have an optimized shape to provide the most robust signal and using processes and materials that provide an extremely long functional life.
Development of Our Technology
To date, we have deployed our ClearSign Core technology through retrofits and replacements of existing burners and complete replacement units in the case of our Plug & Play and boiler burner products. Retrofits often involve engineering around an existing burner architecture that can complicate the ClearSign Core burner installation, whereas replacements are more straightforward and more amenable to being sold and installed by third parties, enabling more expansive channels to market. This is especially the case after the introduction of our Plug & Play technology in February 2017 and the simplified control and operation of this technology enabled by the inclusion of a new start up and flame initiation system in April 2019. Because of this, we have focused the development of our technology to provide designs that can be included into our prospective customers’ equipment as self-contained modules or assemblies rather than projects involving the re-engineering of existing burner systems. In this form, we believe that the ClearSign Core burner technology is ideally suited for installation into new heaters and burner replacements, including heater and furnaces requiring large quantities of burners. In addition, this strategy also provides for simple new burner installations, or burner replacements to reduce emissions in boilers ranging from small fire tube boilers to large water tube boilers. We have also developed the ClearSign Core flare technology into similar repeatable forms to aid its inclusion in standard industry installations on a commercial scale with multiple installations now operational in California.
For simplification and marketing, we have adopted the term “ClearSign Core” to refer to the inclusion of our standardized proprietary combustion technology into a variety of combustion equipment types including, but not limited to, process heater burners, boiler burners, burners for thermal oxidizers and flares. Earlier ClearSign technology-based heater retrofits, in which a continuous ceramic “wall” was suspended above the existing burners, also continue to operate, and are referred to as “Duplex” technology. Although the combustion controlling principles of both the “ClearSign Core” and “Duplex” technologies are the same, ClearSign Core products have standardized technology and we believe they are easier to use and have a different channel to market.
ClearSign Core burners currently operate in multiple boilers, heaters and flares and meet new compliance standards enacted by California air authority. We also have products in commercial use in Europe and certified for sale in the Chinese boiler market. As noted above, our principal technologies have been developed into standardized designs. Our business development activities are now focused on developing customer acceptance and adoption within what we believe are the most efficient channels to market. The industries using our technology take a conservative approach to adopting new technology and place significant reliance on references from existing customers when selecting new equipment. A major focus of our current business development activities is to make early sales and build our reference list in both the process burner and boiler industries. We also seek to provide comprehensive technical support to our sales efforts as well as demonstrate our technology and products in operation. We are currently able to demonstrate our products while operating in rental boilers, industrial scale process burner test furnaces, and at customer locations when permissible.
ClearSign Core Technology Product Applications
To date, we have deployed our ClearSign Core technology through the retrofit or replacement of existing burners. As noted above, retrofits often involve engineering around an existing burner architecture that can complicate the installation. This was the case with the old “Duplex” technology, which we no longer promote although we continue servicing installed units. Our replacement
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products have become more attractive since the 2017 introduction of our Plug & Play technology and the 2019 introduction of our start up and flame initiation system, which simplifies the control and operation of our products. By developing our ClearSign Core technology into a replacement product, we have been able to standardize our designs and simplify supply-chain demands. In addition, by removing the need to individually engineer every application, we have enabled collaboration with other commercial equipment suppliers with the intent to incorporate our ClearSign Core technology into their standard product lines. We believe that this further development of our products has greatly increased our ability to collaborate with partners to extend our potential market reach and the resources we make available to our prospective customers.
Process Heaters in the Oil Refining, Petrochemical and Gas Processing Industries
To date, we have retrofitted five process heaters with our new ClearSign Core burners for refineries and fuel distributors some of which are owned by global supermajor companies and Fortune 500 companies. Sites include three locations in California and one in Europe. The ClearSign Core “Plug & Play” design provides a more simplified, pre-engineered and standardized direct burner replacement for traditional refinery process heaters that we believe can be mass produced and reduce the need for the customized engineering associated with typical retrofits. The ClearSign Core “Plug & Play” design (including the boiler burner version) is our most developed burner product. It operates essentially in the same way as a standard burner, including fitting into a heater and integrating with existing control systems. We believe that this product is suitable for licensing as well as potential manufacturing arrangements with OEMs that have established manufacturing and distribution capabilities. At this time, we have a collaboration agreement in place with Zeeco Inc., which is one of the world’s largest combustion equipment manufacturers (“Zeeco”). The selling and marketing of our process burners pursuant to this agreement, however, is contingent on the successful completion of a comprehensive product performance and validation test.
In 2021, we received our first international purchase order for a ClearSign Core refining process heater from a global supermajor refining company. This marked the second order we received from a global supermajor company. This international order was installed in 2021 and successfully placed it into full operation by the customer in January 2022. In addition, we fulfilled a multi-burner order for a Fortune 500 infrastructure company that continues to consistently meet all performance requirements including compliance with the California site’s air quality permit. We also received a purchase order in 2022 from a California refinery for our ClearSign Core “Plug & Play” burners. To date, this purchase order is the largest received by ClearSign with the total order quantity amounting to twenty ClearSign Core “Plug & Play” burners.
As we seek to expand the markets into which we can sell our products, we plan to continue extending the range of ClearSign Core Plug & Play products to enable the replacement of other burner shapes and configurations, as well as for use in alternate process applications.
Industrial Commercial Boilers
Boilers are used in many industrial applications, and smaller scale commercial and residential applications, to generate steam and hot water. A large number of boiler manufacturers produce many styles of boiler equipment for these different applications. In our target markets, boilers exist in two different industry-standard forms: water tube, which tend to be larger and in which the water or steam flows through a series of tubes that surround the space in which the flame forms; or fire tube in which the flame is formed inside a large tube that passes through the outer vessel holding the water.
Our “Core” boiler burner technology has been developed to enable it to be used in a series of consistently designed sizes ranging from small fire tube boilers up to large industrial water tube boilers. For fire tube products, we have developed our own patent protected burner replacement product that is similar in concept to our ClearSign Core Plug & Play device for process heaters. These boiler burners have achieved performance levels meeting the most stringent new California NOx regulations, in a typical commercial fire tube boiler produced by one of the industry’s largest suppliers in the U.S. For instance, through our collaboration agreement in place with California Boiler to sell, deliver, install and service fire tube boiler burners in the U.S., we were able access larger sizes of fire tube boilers in order to verify the function of a range of fire tube boiler burners.
Additionally, we demonstrated the operation of our small fire tube burner for Chinese officials, who subsequently certified it for sale in China. We plan to seek certification of larger fire tube and water tube boiler burners with our collaborative partner Jiangsu Shuang Liang Boiler Co. Ltd, which is a subsidiary of China's Shuang Liang Group Co. Ltd and one of China's top 500 enterprises. If further testing and certification is successful in China, our goal will be to sell the boiler burner technology into the very large Chinese
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market through our collaborative partnership. Water tube boilers are larger and more varied in their designs and verification projects are ongoing. We anticipate making continued progress during 2023 both demonstrating and commercializing such equipment, although our progress may continue to be delayed by the effects of the COVID-19. Water tube boiler burners are particularly important in China because of the extensive network of government-run heating districts that provide heat in the northern regions of China.
Wellhead Enclosed Flares
Based upon discussions with local regulators and the examination of regulatory reports, we believe that certain regions are targeting enclosed flare emissions for increased future regulation. California, for example, has already added new low NOx emissions regulations for flares. We have adapted the ClearSign Core technology to suit this application. Our collaboration agreement with the field engineering and servicing company California Boiler includes flare sales and installation. To date, we have four flare units installed and operating in California resulting from this California Boiler collaboration agreement.
OTSGs for the Enhanced Oil Recovery Industry
We have successfully installed our Duplex technology in three OTSG projects in the enhanced oil recovery industry in California. Field data reported by our customers indicates significant efficiency improvements resulting from the installation of the ClearSign technology. We believe our new standardized boiler burner range of products is also well suited to this application.
Our Target Markets
Our ClearSign Core products compete in the combustion and emissions control markets. These industries are highly competitive and currently dominated by companies that have comparatively more established products and substantially greater infrastructure, customer support networks, and financial resources. Based on testing and completed field installations to date, however, we believe that our ClearSign Core technology provides several unique and powerful business solutions for our customers, including, but not limited to: (i) overall cost-effective installation, (ii) energy efficiency, (iii) operational performance and (iv) significantly reduced emissions. Further, we believe that our technology is well-suited to create substantial synergistic value by incorporating it into mainstream commercial offerings with the market incumbents, thus leveraging the “ClearSign Core” technology along with the established breadth and capabilities of collaborating companies, such as Zeeco and California Boiler.
We are targeting the following segments of the combustion market for adoption of our ClearSign Core technology:
● institutional, commercial and industrial boilers;
● refinery, energy infrastructure and petrochemical process heaters;
● enclosed flares; and
● enhanced oil recovery steam generators
In each of these segments, we are marketing solutions that include our ClearSign Core technology which we believe could simultaneously improve productivity, operational efficiency and pollution control.
Our target markets are greatly affected by air emission regulations and economic conditions. Accordingly, we prioritize our activities in target market segments geographically based on the needs of the local industries and the current and anticipated future requirements imposed by local environmental regulation. Details regarding the localized effect of environmental regulation in the United States are described in the section of this report titled “Our Industry.” In general, our immediate regional opportunities are in the West and Gulf Coasts of the United States and the regions of Northern China with high populations and cooler environments. In these areas of China, district heating is a large source of fossil fuel consumption, and reducing atmospheric pollution is a high priority of both the national and local governments.
Competition, Barriers to Entry and Go to Market Strategy
The industry in which we operate is global in scope and populated by large, established suppliers of burners and post-combustion air pollution control systems. These suppliers possess resources that are substantially greater than ours. Worldwide, suppliers of burners and air pollution control equipment include but are not limited to companies such as Callidus, Eclipse and Maxon
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(all three are subsidiaries of Honeywell), John Zink Hamworthy Combustion (a subsidiary of Koch Industries and including Coen), General Electric, Haldor Topsøe, Hitachi, Linde, Zeeco, Fives Group, Cleaver Brooks, Power Flame (a subsidiary of Aztec Inc.), and others.
These companies provide systems that include low and ultra-low NOx burners, selective and non-selective catalytic reduction systems, and other pollution control technologies. They are well-established and their combustion and emissions control systems are based mostly on mature, well-understood and proven technologies. As a result of the relatively slow pace of developing and adopting innovation, we believe the technology and products currently being offered by our large competitors have become commoditized with differentiation between suppliers most often based on price. These industry characteristics provide both an opportunity and a barrier to more nimble, disruptive companies.
From a customer's perspective, installation of legacy air pollution control technologies is viewed as a method of avoiding fines, as a cost of doing business, and as a means to operate within current and anticipated future regulatory requirements.
Unlike most other kinds of capital equipment that provide an economic return through enhanced productivity or efficiency, we believe customers of traditional emissions control equipment do not expect any positive return on emissions control investments other than the ability to continue to operate or avoid fines. We believe the ClearSign Core suite of products are further differentiated from its competitors because they give prospective customers the opportunity to greatly reduce capital investment and, in certain cases, realize a return on investment through increased efficiency and/or increased productivity.
As indicated above, we are seeking to develop our business in the combustion and emissions control market and to establish ourselves in a highly competitive industry among companies that have substantial financial resources, a well-developed infrastructure and established products. Our business development strategy seeks to obtain recognition of our technology’s value while minimizing the challenges inherent in this market including the strengths of the other market participants.
Major barriers faced by a new equipment manufacturer seeking to enter this market include:
1.
Developing engineering, order fulfillment and customer service staff: Especially in the refining and petrochemical industries, customers require specialist support throughout the life cycle of the combustion equipment including with order execution when purchasing. Recruiting and developing sufficient staff with the special skills necessary to provide the level of service required by customers in this market would take time and result in a significant ongoing overhead cost.
2.
Developing operational infrastructure: Again, especially in the refining and petrochemical industries, customers require thorough quality assurance procedures, including demonstration of an item from their order, to prove that it meets performance guarantees. This requires, among other things, having access to a test furnace. Developing such an operation would require significant investment and ongoing costs.
3.
Conservative customers: Our customers are very careful and methodical about adopting a new technology or product because of the complexity of their infrastructures, the cost of downtime in any part of a processing plant and the potential safety hazards of their operations.
4.
Profit opportunity: There is very little differentiation between the products offered by the established burner equipment providers, which results in thin profit margins for the sale of new or replacement burners. A significant portion of a company’s profit results from the sales of replacement parts and equipment upgrades. Any new entrant without a differentiating technology will not have this established source of significant and immediate profit.
We developed our “go to market” strategy for the ClearSign Core combustion business considering our strengths and weaknesses. The most important weaknesses are related to the barriers to entry identified above. We are a small company with limited financial resources and do not have the infrastructure to meet the requirements of our sophisticated target global customers without significant investment and increase in operational costs. Although we have highly skilled and experienced employees, we do not have the manpower to provide comprehensive service and customer support ourselves. We believe that it is in the best interests of the Company and our shareholders to develop our business utilizing an “asset light” model. Accordingly, we seek to collaborate with strategic partners to the extent possible to sell our products and maximize the profitability of those sales.
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Our strengths include our technology, which has been developed to provide a standard set of “core” components that can be incorporated into any generic OEM burner body. These components enable unique performance that minimizes emissions and controls flame size. Our strengths also include the market opportunity potentially created by new and anticipated environmental emissions control regulations. These regulations will potentially require combustion performance that either exceeds the technology available from the incumbent equipment manufacturers or requires retrofitting existing equipment with a post-combustion clean up apparatus. Installing clean-up apparatus is very expensive especially for small to mid-sized heaters. We believe that the incumbent burner OEM product development approaches are, and will continue to be, incremental in nature, and are unlikely to pose a significant threat to the value provided by ClearSign Core technology in the foreseeable future.
Our business has been, and continues to be, developed with the goal of combining our technology with the infrastructure and resources of major OEM equipment manufacturers. Through such collaborative arrangements, OEM burner manufacturers can reap the benefits of adding truly differentiated and unique product lines to their offerings and ClearSign can overcome the barrier to market of needing to build capital and operating expense-intensive infrastructure and hiring a large specialist staff. In addition, we believe that having orders fulfilled by a well-known and trusted supplier will reduce the risk, as perceived by prospective customers, of dealing with a small company and aid in the adoption of our technology.
Our business plan contemplates forming collaborative partnerships with major OEM equipment manufacturers. At this time, we have demonstrated that our technology has commercial viability by generating interest from OEMs and end users. We expect that developing strategically chosen collaborative partnerships will result in supplying ClearSign Core technology to major global customers in large quantities together with the attendant engineering, quality control, customer support and project management services required by these sophisticated customers. We also believe that our collaborative partnerships will enable our OEM partners to offer a unique product in the marketplace and provide both parties with a potentially significant commercial opportunity. Forming such alliances is expected to dramatically accelerate the global sales and market adoption of our technology. As announced in June 2019, we already have an agreement in place with Zeeco, who is one of the world’s largest burner manufacturers, to globally manufacture ClearSign Core process burners. The selling and marketing of our process burners pursuant to this agreement, however, is contingent on the successful completion of a comprehensive product performance and validation test. In addition, we have a collaborative agreement with California Boiler to sell and produce both fire tube boiler burner and flare products. We are also pursuing various licensing types of arrangements for other market verticals and ClearSign Core applications.
Pricing Strategy . We believe that the unique capabilities of our technology improve combustion equipment performance and provide significant economic value to our customers compared to the next best alternative solutions available. As a result, we expect that products containing ClearSign Core technology will sell at prices based on the value they offer rather than pursuant to standard competitive pricing that our competitors are forced to use in these mature markets.
Sensing Products. We are currently seeking first adopters to install our flame sensors for field demonstration. Although we have not yet completed the product launch of our sensing products and subsequent commercialization, we have obtained clear and consistent customer feedback guiding its first application. The target market for this technology is potentially every burner with a pilot on which flame sensors are deployed, providing a global and very high-volume opportunity. This market is not limited by emissions mandates or the type or manufacturer of the burners. The product has value for retrofit applications, where it is applied to existing burners, and for new burners, where it can be installed in burners by OEMs.
We are assessing the possibility of manufacturing the sensing products ourselves as well as partnering with one or more established OEM suppliers. Demonstration units have been manufactured and we currently have the ability to manufacture the sensor ourselves for the foreseeable future. We are also exploring alternative paths to monetize the technology, including opportunities to license our technology.
The fundamental technology for the sensors envisioned for transport applications is the same as for the flame sensors, but the application and form of the final product will be very different. We have received notable interest in this product from a major global customer giving us the confidence that there is a potential market for this technology, which is therefore worthy of future investment. This sensor product is in the very early stages of development and would be deployed in a highly regulated environment requiring a thorough product development process. The interest we have received to date, however, suggests that this could potentially be a significant future business opportunity for ClearSign.
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Suppliers and Subcontractors
Due to our “asset light” model, we use subcontractors to source, warehouse and manufacture our products. This model
allows us to maximize the value of our limited resources while minimizing capital investment. Our subcontractor, for the process burner product line, is intentionally single sourced through a collaborative agreement with a well-known and established industry leader, Zeeco. Our boiler burner product line is not dependent upon a single-sourced subcontractor. While we continuously assess, for any improvements in productivity and supply chain efficiency, there can be no assurance that our subcontractors will not experience supply interruptions, production capacity constraints or working capital limitations, which could adversely affect our business.
Raw steel and fabricated steel parts are a major component of our product cost, purchases of which are subject to the needs and specifications of our customers or subcontractors. Periodic changes in the price of steel may affect our final product pricing to customers. In addition, increases in the costs of raw steel or other supplies may also increase our working capital requirements, warranty obligations and product profitability.
Supply interruptions, tariffs or price increases may slow production, delay shipments to our customers or increase production costs in the future, any of which could adversely affect our financial results; however, we intend to pass along production cost increases to customers to the extent we deem appropriate. We expect that delays, interruptions or non-optimal scheduling of production related to interruptions in raw materials supplies would result in an increase to our costs. We can give no assurance that the COVID-19 pandemic, global supply-chain constraints or geopolitical conflicts will not adversely affect our ability or our subcontractors’ ability to procure raw materials and components necessary to build our products.
Research and Development Program
The experience and industry contacts of our management team, board of directors, and consultants, along with potential customers in the petroleum, petrochemical, and industrial steam applications industries inform our research and development program. Field evaluation agreements, research agreements, and memoranda of understanding with potential development partners, customers and research institutions support this process. Our research and development activities make use of employees and consultants who are experts in the areas of industrial combustion, statistical experimental design, fluid mechanics and heat transfer.
With the maturation of our ClearSign Core technology, our development process has transitioned from research to commercialization. This has included optimizing the technology to perform in a manner readily adoptable by our prospective customers and easy to incorporate into the burner structures of our collaborative alliance partners. This later phase of development is influenced by customer feedback, product and component standardization, design for manufacture and inventory management simplification, both with respect to the manufacture of and lifetime support for our products.
Our technology and products for flame sensing applications have been proven at bench scale in our laboratory and at full scale in “first article” form. This product is currently in the commercialization phase. As discussed above, we also have another form of our sensing technology that we believe can indicate the potential flammability of a hydrocarbon gas and air mixture, which can have great and varied application in other industries such as transport. This product is in an earlier form and is currently undergoing validation and optimization of its intended role in this very different application.
Intellectual Property Protection
We have generated inventions that we believe to be patentable subject matter and for which we have been seeking protection through patent application filings. As of December 31, 2022, we have 116 active patent grants and another 31 patents pending with Patent Offices in the United States, China, and various European countries. We maintain an active review process to monitor for new inventions across the globe that threaten our intellectual property protection.
We cannot predict when our patent applications may result in issued patents, if at all. Further, we may modify a patent application in the future as we develop additional information. As a result, we may create additional patent applications from an existing application, consolidate existing patent applications, abandon applications, or otherwise modify applications based upon our judgment in order to protect our intellectual property in a reasonably cost-efficient manner.
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Government Regulation
Government regulation, particularly with respect to the environment, is likely to play an important role in shaping our product mix and offerings. In addition, field implementation of our technologies requires permits from various local, state and federal agencies that regulate mechanical and electrical infrastructure and fire and air pollution control.
We believe that we offer major advances in emissions reductions and efficiency improvements. We also believe that emissions regulations could require a reduction in pollutants such as NOx thereby potentially enhancing market demand for our technology upon implementation of any such regulations. Possible legislation related to greenhouse gases, boiler Maximum Available Control Technology (MACT) rules, or other general reductions in required pollutant levels globally, especially in the U.S. and China, could bolster our ability to meet our business objectives. Although the timing of any such regulations is uncertain, the general trend over the last decades continues to be government-mandated reduction for all criteria pollutants. Ultimately, it may be possible for our technology to achieve BARCT [and/or MACT] designation. We believe that the availability of our technology alone may accelerate the government’s willingness to adopt more stringent environmental regulations. Further, we believe efficiency improvements, combined with the elimination of flame impingement, could generate market demand regardless of the existing regulatory framework because the potential efficiency, productivity and savings gains from our products could result in the adoption of our technology.
At this time, we believe that the current U.S. administration supports “green initiatives,” and we are not aware of any current or proposed federal, state or local environmental compliance regulations that would have a material detrimental effect on our business objectives. We do not anticipate any major expenditures to be required in order for our technology to comply with any environmental protection statutes. Concurrently the Chinese government has enacted notable tightening of allowable emissions levels, particularly for NOx emissions, and we anticipate this trend will continue in the future.
Human Capital
As of December 31, 2022, we had 16 full-time employees, and no part-time employees. Our employees are not covered by collective bargaining agreements, and we believe our relationship with our employees is good.
Corporate History
We were incorporated in the State of Washington on January 23, 2008. The address of our corporate headquarters is 8023
East 63rd Place, Suite 101, Tulsa, OK and our telephone number is (918) 236-6461. Our website can be accessed at www.clearsign.com. The information contained on our website is not a part of this report. We currently operate in the United States, People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.
Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.