Like medieval alchemists, lab rats from High River to Helsinki are burning the midnight oil in the search for a 21st-century philosopher’s stone – a cheap, environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels.

Every so often, a white-coated researcher bursts from the lab and shouts “Eureka!”

Invariably, an IPO is contemplated and a corporation is formed. Marketable applications are sought and sometimes found.

Such tantalizing plays appeal to the riverboat gambler who lurks in the heart of the most temperate stock-market dabbler.

Larry MacDougal photo, Business Edge
Tathacus CEO Kim Sturgess says it takes solid engineering to take a “save-the-world” product from concept to production.

As we speak, dozens of such companies are chasing windfalls in a high-stakes, high-risk, cutthroat scramble that’s reminiscent of the Klondike gold rush.

But now that Tathacus Resources Ltd. (TTC-TSX) of Calgary has managed to emerge from an incredible series of snafus and setbacks, the new president/CEO is relieved just to be back in the race.

“We’re putting the past behind us,” said Kim Sturgess, a Queen’s-educated engineer with a track record in product development.

Long-term Tathacus shareholders must feel like bronc riders who’ve been dragged through a brier patch while hanging from a stirrup.

Many have hung tough, wringing their hands through extended periods of limbo while trading of Tathacus shares was suspended by the Canadian Venture Exchange.

Sturgess came aboard last January in the wake of shakeups to the board and management team, and a month after the exchange ended a trading suspension that had dragged on almost two years.

Exchange regulators took issue with claims made by the five-year-old company on behalf of its ace in the hole – a breakthrough process for creating a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas from tap water.

After months of wrangling, the company eventually agreed to allow independent evaluators to assess the process.

And on May 30, the evaluators mercifully ended the suspense when their favourable report was made public.

They dismissed prior claims that descriptions of the process, developed by British inventor Steve Chambers, somehow defied the laws of physics.

They verified that the oxy-hydrogen gas was produced from City of Calgary tap water, and was able to operate a Briggs and Strattons engine and a Honda generator with only “minor modifications.”

Relieved investors responded by running up share prices from $1.45 to $2.05 in one session. Tathacus had climbed to a $2.70 close by last Friday. That’s a far cry from previous highs of $12-plus, but it did encourage the new boss.

What’s Tathacus got?

To clear up one misconception, it’s NOT a fuel cell. And it works, a hypothesis backed up by experts. Sturgess faces a more pertinent challenge – making the technology pay.

“We have to get away from this focus on trying to understand the core technology,” she said, cutting to the chase.

“We’ve got a nice gas coming out the end of a tube. In my world, that’s sort of a ‘so-what?’ What’s important is finding out what we can do with it.”

The obvious answer – use it as a clean energy source to fuel the automobiles of the future. But that’s not likely to happen.

“There are too many players in the automotive game, too much competition,” said Sturgess.

Recent demonstrations indicate the gas is a viable fuel for hot-air furnaces and hot-water heaters. Meanwhile, in conjunction with a group called APD Environmental Inc., Tathacus is exploring potential environmental applications.

“There are a lot of people claiming to have a save-the-world technology,” Sturgess pointed out. “It takes good engineering to take it from a concept to a product.”

Good engineering is a Sturgess specialty. She brings credibility to a tempest-tossed company that needed it desperately.

A one-time board chair of the Calgary Science Centre, Sturgess led a company known as Revolve Technologies Inc. during the mid-1990s.

A producer of magnetic bearing products for high-speed industrial equipment, the company was ultimately sold to a much larger competitor, SKF of Sweden. Presumably, Sturgess would come up aces if she could lead Tathacus into a similarly attractive takeover situation.

Meanwhile, she has the company AGM, set for June 26 at the Metropolitan Centre, to think about. Her primary purpose will be to soothe nerve-shattered shareholders. She could do them a bigger favour by telling them enough cash has been found to carry the company through to the point where it can generate revenue.

Should you be buying into 21st-century alchemy? Only your inner riverboat gambler knows for sure. That shrewd market analyst, Dirty Harry, might put it another way: Do you feel lucky?