EXPERIENCE 165 | Pioneering a Cleaner and Greener World with Serial Inventor and Entrepreneur Ed VanDyne - Founder, President and CEO of Plastic 2 Green and Founder, President, and Team Manager of Tetrahedron Racing.
In today’s episode, I was honored to be joined in studio by Ed VanDyne, one of the most fascinating guests we’ve had on the show. When you look up serial entrepreneur in the dictionary, you’ll find Ed’s smiling face, and the ideas that have sprouted his various companies are consolidated from ideas and learnings from previous chapters, including a lengthy season managing the MIT Racing Team, and spinning a technology company out of Woodward, VanDyne SuperTurbo! The innovative sails for Tetrahedron Racing boats, for example, are the same shape as the molecules of ammonia created through Plastic 2 Green’s innovative processes!
Plastic 2 Green is the star of this show, however. Ed has developed an innovative process to turn waste plastics into market-competitive carbon rods, carbon black, and ammonia - plus more - using plasma to break down plastic molecules, and science to send the resulting molecules to the appropriate containers. Future cargo ships will burn an ammonia / diesel blend, and in Ed’s opinion, ammonia is the best and most-stable way to move toward a hydrogen-powered economy.
The smoke in the studio during this podcast wasn’t from herb, it was my little brain overheating trying to listen and think and process and ask good questions! I think I did a pretty good job of it, for a country kid, so please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Ed VanDyne.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain
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In today's episode, I was honored to be joined in studio by Ed Van Dyne, one of the most fascinating guests we've had on the show.
00:00:47.990 --> 00:01:04.661
When you look up serial entrepreneur in the dictionary, you'll find Ed's smiling face, and the ideas that have sprouted his various companies are consolidated from ideas and learnings from previous chapters, including a lengthy season managing the MIT racing team, and spinning a technology company out of Woodward, Van Dyne Super Turbo.
00:01:05.745 --> 00:01:14.085
The innovative sails for Tetrahedron racing boats, for example, are the same shape as the molecules of ammonia created through Plastic to Green's innovative processes.
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Plastic to Green is the star of this show.
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However, Ed has developed an innovative process to turn waste plastics into market competitive carbon rods, carbon black, and ammonia, plus more, using plasma to break down plastic molecules and science to send the resulting molecules to the appropriate containers.
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Future cargo ships will burn an ammonia diesel blend.
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And in Ed's opinion, ammonia is the best and most stable way to move toward a hydrogen powered economy.
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The smoke in the studio during this podcast wasn't from Herb, it was my little brain overheating trying to listen and think and process and ask good questions.
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I think I did a pretty good job of it for a country kid, so please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Ed Van Dyne back to the Loco Experience Podcast.
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My guest today is Ed Van Dyne.
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And Ed is the founder, president, and CEO of Plastic to Green, his latest venture, as well as founder, president, team manager of Tetrahedron Racing.
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So, um, Can we start with the racing team?
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Sure.
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Thank you for having me.
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You're welcome.
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Thanks for being on.
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The racing team is an attempt to break the world speed record in sailing.
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Okay.
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The key to the idea is using a tetrahedron shape, which is the strongest structure known to man.
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Okay.
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And so we have a prototype boat already.
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That's made of steel and it's, uh, fairly big, 15 feet wide, 25 feet long and about 25 feet tall and it only weighs 400 pounds.
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A typical sailboat of that size, 25 footer would be three tons.
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And so the ability to make a lightweight.
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Sailboat is, you know, the, the initial idea behind it, but there's probably a dozen more patents that we are working on, um, for how to go fast with that sailboat.
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And so it will foil, unlike America's cup boat, it'll foil on three foils so that it's much more stable.
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And the other key is the current record holder is a boat that only goes one way.
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And so they put it into the water, and they go down the beach.
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Uh, and then they pull it.
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Right, as long as the wind is at your back, then you're good, but you have no way home.
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Yeah, you pretty much have to pull over, put it back on the beach, tow it, you know, carry it back to the other end of the beach, and put it back in the water.
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So it takes about four hours to do an individual run.
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So hopefully the wind is still there four hours later.
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Right.
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And so, uh, this, the idea behind this project, Boat is really to be able to go in both directions, sort of like a conventional, more traditional sailing vessel sail bot.
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Does it have a sail in the same way?
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It actually has three sails.
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Okay.
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So it has a main sail that's further back in two jibs, one to each side.
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So it utilizes the tetrahedron, uh, shape to the maximum effect by having the.
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You know where the right or the, the windward, uh, jib hold the boat down and you know when that's the side that wants to tip up.
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Mm-Hmm.
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Mm-Hmm.
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And then the, the, the leeward sail.
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Jib sail pulls the boat up out of the water to help.
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Oh.
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Prevent from burying the, the leeward, you know, uh, side of the boat, which is normally tipping and uses that wind force, uh, I guess almost like a Judo style against itself to keep the boat flat, more flat.
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Correct.
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Um, I'm embarrassed to say, but I don't know what the shape of a tetrahedron is.
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It's a pyramid of triangles.
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So it has a triangular base and then has a pyramid up from that.
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So three, three beams instead of four.
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Okay.
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Looks like a pyramid minus one corner.
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And that's that whole, um, that's the whole structure is that the thing that resembles that then?
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Correct.
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Okay, interesting.
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And so a very strange thing along the way when I was working on the sailboat is I came up with the idea for the lowest cost way to make ammonia.
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Which, uh, out of waste plastic, which is what plastic to Green founding idea came from.
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And about eight months later, I decided I was gonna join the Ammonia, uh, power Association, ammonia, ammonia Energy Association, I guess.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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And their logo was the exact same logo as my sailboat logo.
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No.
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And I said, the heck is going on here.
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And I realized that the ammonia molecule is actually a tetrahedron.
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Oh.
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And I was like, You know, blown away and laughing and falling on the floor, you know, with the sort of like, well, that's pretty Oh, God's got a sense of humor, somehow.
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Somehow.
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There's definitely some reason I So did you just stumble into the ammonia thing out of plastic?
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I mean, that wasn't related to the racing venture, necessarily, or One aspect was related in that I was studying the sailing and boating industry, and we had actually looked at, um, making some of our tetrahedron sails for large shipping vessels.
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And so making those large shipping vessels with sails is something that Michelin and some other big companies were working on.
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And we, I just took literally a prototype of the sailboat, um, you know, the top half, the sailing top half of my sailboat and dropped it onto a picture of a giant shipping vessel and basically made a picture of how you could use transcripts.
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tetrahedron cells on top of an existing boat without needing to add to the structure of the existing boat because the tetrahedron structure would take care of itself.
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Oh, that's so cool.
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And so, um, but in.
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more about the shipping industry, I learned that the future fuel of the shipping industry was going to be ammonia.
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And so they had already tried hydrogen, they had already tried other fuels, and they had concluded that their future carbon free fuel was going to be ammonia.
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And so when I, another thing You're like, well, that would be a big, big deal.
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Potential customer, right?
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And so, uh, a friend of mine asked me to look into how to make green hydrogen.
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And I've been annoyed with plastic waste.
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I'm a diver.
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And I, you know, I read an article 15 years ago or so that said, you know, when you put plastic in the trash, it goes to the dump, but it doesn't stay there.
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It gets up and floats away and it floats down the stream.
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Cause.
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Plastic floats, right?
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And so it floats out of the dump down the stream into the rivers into the ocean and being a diver I'm like, okay and and so for the past 15 years Every time I you know Take a wrapper off the top of a brand new ketchup bottle and I put it in the trash I apologize to Mother Nature for the fact that I'm not disposing of this properly.
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Yeah.
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Yeah and putting it in the dump I hope it stays in the dump right and doesn't end up When you say it floats, does plastic kind of work its way out of dirt?
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Yes.
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Kind of?
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It floats.
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Right.
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And so the dirt settles.
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It's lighter than the soil, and so over time, over 10, 000 years or whatever, 50 years, it'll work its way out of the dump and Sometime one day, you know, it depends on how buried the plastic is.
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Right.
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But it gets up out of the dirt and floats away and goes down to the stream and ends up in the ocean anyway.
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Right.
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Well, and if you recycle it, lately at least, it probably just ends up in the dump.
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Anyhow, at least in most of America.
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Correct, because only, um, about 9 percent of plastic gets sent to the recycling center, which is pretty low.
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Right.
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But only about 70, or only about 30 percent of what gets to the recycle center stays, or goes off to be recycled.
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Right.
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because, uh, a Coke bottle has the red ring around the top.
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So even if the cap is gone, the red ring is a different type of plastic.
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And if that red ring is still on the Coke bottle, it does not go to the recycler, it goes back to the dump.
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Oh, is that right?
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Yes.
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Because it's, they can't handle it.
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It's too labor intensive.
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Too labor intensive to cut red rings off of Coke bottles in order to recycle them.
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So the, the, the recycling guys only take the pure plastic that's properly prepared for them.
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That's very little.
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So every time you Mr.
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or Mrs.
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customer out there leaves a little red ring on the Coke bottle, you're basically throwing away, even if you recycle it.
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Correct.
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Try to.
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Yes.
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And lots of other problems.
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And lots of other problems.
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So tell me about, is burning ammonia already something that people do?
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Um, not quite yet.
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I mean, there are lots of startups and even Toyota.
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Toyota's developing an ammonia powered engine.
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Okay.
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That they'll be releasing in 2026.
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Oh, know which country it's going to be released in.
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Huh.
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But America's a good place to release it because ammonia is only about 70 cents a gallon.
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You do need two gallons for every one gallon of gasoline because it has a lower heating value.
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Right.
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But, you know, that makes it a dollar 40 a gallon compared to gasoline.
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Well, and as I, what I'm familiar with ammonia because of, uh, farming.
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Yes.
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My dad's a farmer in North Dakota, and I know that, like, natural gas is, you know, not too far chemically even from ammonia, right?
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Like, that's a big input source, at least, for that molecule.
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99 percent of ammonia today is made from natural gas.
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Okay.
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Because, being CH4, it has four hydrogens, one carbon.
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And ammonia has three hydrogens, one nitrogen.
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Okay.
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And so it's very similar and so that's why they use steam methane reforming to be able to make the ammonia.
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Um, and third, because also they get 30 percent of their hydrogen from the water.
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Not just the, uh, the methane.
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And so the, uh, that's the primary way it's produced today.
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And when we take plastics apart and pull the molecules apart from the plastic, we only get about 10 to 14 percent hydrogen.
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So it's a fairly low ratio.
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But then when you add the nitrogen molecule to it from the air, you actually get more.
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mass you're shipping out than you cut in.
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And there's lots of nitrogen that's freely available by comparison.
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Correct.
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And so the nitrogen comes from the air.
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Now, most people think of fertilizer as nitrogen, right?
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And so that's the part that you want on the farm.
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Right.
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Well, you need something to fix it too.
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Right.
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You need something to hold it in place.
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And so that becomes the hydrogen.
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Now, and.
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Without ammonia, we would only be able to feed about 3 billion people on this planet.
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So thanks to ammonia, we can feed 7, 8, going on 9 billion people, right?
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And so, um, ammonia is never And more if we got our shit together, and a little more carbon in the atmosphere.
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We can't not make ammonia.
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We need it.
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to feed as many people as we have.
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Yeah.
00:13:05.561 --> 00:13:08.541
And, um, so that's a very important molecule.
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But if we're now gonna, you know, run on a non carbon based fuel in the future, we're gonna need a lot, lot more of it.
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And so, fortunately, the oil industry, and together with the plastics industry, make an awful lot of plastics that don't get recycled.
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Right.
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And our process can take all of those, including the food waste, the paper waste, the aluminum, think of a yogurt container.
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It's got some yogurt left in it and it's got the aluminum lid and that aluminum lid makes that piece of plastic unrecycled, right?
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Not to mention the paper label that wraps around the, the, you know, the plastic, that combination, that mixture of stuff, you know, we can take it all.
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Uh, because we're using what's called a medical waste destruction process as our front end.
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So this is a process that takes medical waste and basically breaks down the, the liquid that's still in there.
00:14:06.115 --> 00:14:18.176
The blood molecules basically cooks it all to inert molecules and it takes the, the gaseous part of the, you know, the plastics after they're gasified.
00:14:18.436 --> 00:14:30.855
They get destroyed by an even higher temperature plasma, and then that gas has enough energy in it that they run that gas into an engine, and that engine can run the process.
00:14:30.856 --> 00:14:30.985
Oh.
00:14:30.985 --> 00:14:37.796
So when I, when I saw the fact, and being a combustion engineer from my past automotive experience, Sure.
00:14:37.836 --> 00:14:38.725
We haven't covered yet.
00:14:39.385 --> 00:14:45.865
Um, the, uh, my, the combustion, you know, on that engine is only about 30 percent efficient.
00:14:46.336 --> 00:14:55.275
And so the fact that they could get, you know, essentially enough energy that a, an engine at 30 percent efficient could run the entire plasma.
00:14:55.681 --> 00:15:06.870
destruction process of the medical waste, I basically did it, you know, back of the envelope calculation that I was going to get more energy out than the energy the plasma took.
00:15:06.900 --> 00:15:07.250
Right.
00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:07.571
Right.
00:15:07.581 --> 00:15:14.740
It doesn't hurt that I'm a plasma engineer and invented a high energy plasma ignition at MIT in my youth.
00:15:15.120 --> 00:15:24.140
And that high energy plasma ignition I also knew was very highly efficient in how much energy I could deliver versus how much energy.
00:15:24.510 --> 00:15:25.730
It took from the battery.
00:15:25.750 --> 00:15:27.931
So yeah, from a car.
00:15:27.961 --> 00:15:40.941
So I think what I hear you saying is that this, this plasma engine kind of breaks this max of mess down and then outflowing from that is, is at least in part, is that this ammonia already?
00:15:41.475 --> 00:15:44.735
Or in that case, it's more of just like a, a fuel oil.
00:15:44.885 --> 00:15:45.625
No, it's not.
00:15:45.635 --> 00:15:46.466
Not even that.
00:15:46.515 --> 00:15:50.556
It's, it's a combination, um, done right.
00:15:50.946 --> 00:15:54.416
It's a combination of mostly hydrogen and carbon.
00:15:54.666 --> 00:15:54.926
Okay.
00:15:54.926 --> 00:16:03.461
But because of the food waste and the paper waste, There's small amounts of oxygen, but we're doing our best to keep the oxygen away from the hydrogen.
00:16:03.461 --> 00:16:10.770
So it doesn't convert the hydrogen and oxygen back into water, but it will combine itself with the carbon.
00:16:11.201 --> 00:16:17.980
Um, and so we'll still get some carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from the ammonia that comes from that.
00:16:17.980 --> 00:16:19.380
paper and food waste.
00:16:19.941 --> 00:16:21.520
And can you capture that too?
00:16:21.630 --> 00:16:22.860
We'll capture it later.
00:16:23.120 --> 00:16:23.421
Okay.
00:16:23.421 --> 00:16:35.600
And we'll turn all the carbon monoxide into carbon nanotubes, which are extremely valuable at about between, you know, 15 and 50, 000 a pound.
00:16:36.166 --> 00:16:36.426
Okay.
00:16:36.846 --> 00:16:40.816
And there, they go to the That's for building, uh, those satellites and stuff.
00:16:40.846 --> 00:16:41.956
Well, for building chips.
00:16:41.966 --> 00:16:42.015
Oh, I see.
00:16:42.015 --> 00:16:45.096
Nowadays, that, uh, microchips are three dimensional.
00:16:45.546 --> 00:16:53.946
They're using, uh, carbon nanotubes in place of gold wires to connect the chip itself, the silicon, to the outside world.
00:16:54.056 --> 00:16:54.275
Hmm.
00:16:54.535 --> 00:17:05.490
Because, um, Carbon nanotubes are nearly superconductors, and so they conduct as well or better than gold and they're even at 50, 000 a pound.
00:17:05.820 --> 00:17:08.851
They're so lightweight that they're actually cheaper than gold, right?
00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:18.290
And so it is a it is a cost decrease substitute gold substitute in in a microchip Okay, so that's why they're so expensive.
00:17:18.300 --> 00:17:26.691
So when they convert In the existing process when you convert natural gas into ammonia, there's extra carbon, right?
00:17:26.691 --> 00:17:28.351
Where does that carbon go to?
00:17:28.451 --> 00:17:36.631
Typically, um, whenever they're using it for heating the water, to make the water steam, it all goes to the atmosphere.
00:17:36.651 --> 00:17:43.371
There's other opportunities to capture it, um, but for the most part, it is, you know, gone.
00:17:43.421 --> 00:17:45.230
It goes lost to the wilderness.
00:17:45.230 --> 00:17:45.330
Yeah.
00:17:45.625 --> 00:17:55.685
So it is one of the, um, something like number four in the world for how much carbon emissions are created by the ammonia industry.
00:17:55.685 --> 00:17:56.355
Oh, is that right?
00:17:56.435 --> 00:18:00.056
It's the fourth highest emitter in the world, I think.
00:18:00.246 --> 00:18:00.476
Interesting.
00:18:00.486 --> 00:18:01.000
Something like that.
00:18:01.381 --> 00:18:02.371
After farting cows somewhere.
00:18:03.701 --> 00:18:05.990
After cows in the oil industry.
00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:06.290
Right.
00:18:06.300 --> 00:18:10.151
Or at least the transportation industry fueled by the oil industry.
00:18:10.230 --> 00:18:28.935
So it seems like the trick here is, is really, I mean the technology for the plasma exists, the, um, Kind of the case has been made, but then getting all these molecules to separate themselves into tight little groups and go to their homes, uh, is part of the trick of the chemistry, or the physics, I guess, both?
00:18:29.215 --> 00:18:36.425
Most of that physics, at least on the, the side of, uh, like, separating gases.
00:18:36.580 --> 00:18:38.201
is pretty straightforward, right?
00:18:38.451 --> 00:18:42.121
But the carbon mostly comes out as a solid.
00:18:42.611 --> 00:18:47.951
And so what we need to do is keep that solid carbon from plugging up the filter, right?
00:18:47.990 --> 00:18:57.645
Because we need to stop the carbon from going any further down the stream and be able to then get the gases by themselves so that we can separate them.
00:18:58.056 --> 00:19:08.375
And, um, our intellectual property is really around taking the hydrogen out while it's still hot because you need high heat to make ammonia.
00:19:08.625 --> 00:19:17.326
And so the ammonia catalyst requires between 500 and 800 degrees Celsius, but we're going to destroy the plastics.
00:19:17.476 --> 00:19:19.715
with 5, 000 degrees Celsius, right?
00:19:19.756 --> 00:19:21.455
So it's cooling down at that temperature.
00:19:21.465 --> 00:19:23.395
It's cooling down to the temperature.
00:19:23.395 --> 00:19:35.476
It needs to be for making ammonia, but we need to not cool it too far as then we save a lot of energy because a lot of the energy of making ammonia is how much heat it takes.
00:19:36.296 --> 00:19:41.135
excuse me, to be able to make the ammonia in the ammonia catalyst.
00:19:41.155 --> 00:19:42.806
It takes high pressure and high heat.
00:19:43.415 --> 00:19:59.605
We're trying to conserve heat in order to conserve energy, in order to make that ammonia for less money than the current way of making steam methane reforming ammonia, which we're very confident at this point in time, we will be able to do.
00:19:59.695 --> 00:20:04.945
Well, and not only, Ammonia as a fuel for these ships and apparently Toyota's engine and stuff.
00:20:04.945 --> 00:20:21.586
And I do want to get into the physics of burning ammonia next, but, but even just as fertilizer too, that's one of the things that the, the climate fear thing, I'm like, well, that's great, you know, but we got to feed people, you know, and right now the fertilizer is being made by oil too.
00:20:21.935 --> 00:20:22.336
Correct.
00:20:22.846 --> 00:20:24.016
Natural gas and oil.
00:20:24.115 --> 00:20:24.435
Right.
00:20:24.895 --> 00:20:26.685
Well, obviously natural gas ultimately, but.
00:20:26.715 --> 00:20:27.465
And coal.
00:20:27.605 --> 00:20:27.905
Right.
00:20:27.976 --> 00:20:30.056
There is a coal way of making ammonia too.
00:20:30.057 --> 00:20:30.340
So.
00:20:30.730 --> 00:20:38.510
But it's not very highly utilized, um, again, because natural gas, at least in this country, is very, very inexpensive.
00:20:38.560 --> 00:20:38.810
Right.
00:20:38.810 --> 00:20:55.941
Whereas in Europe, now because of the war in Ukraine, natural gas is very expensive and about 150 plants that make ammonia have been shut down because they can't make ammonia in Europe that's competitive with ammonia made in the U.
00:20:55.941 --> 00:20:56.111
S.
00:20:56.111 --> 00:20:57.181
and shipped to Europe.
00:20:57.280 --> 00:20:57.730
Right.
00:20:57.731 --> 00:20:57.861
Right.
00:20:57.861 --> 00:20:58.980
Because we have low Right.
00:20:59.441 --> 00:21:02.851
You know, sort of what they call stranded natural gas, right?
00:21:02.891 --> 00:21:06.080
And we don't have enough ways of shipping them up.
00:21:06.141 --> 00:21:07.851
We'd like to use more of it, right?
00:21:08.691 --> 00:21:18.971
It's better than oil in a lot of ways because even if you know given it's just CH4 It only has one carbon molecule as a transition fuel.
00:21:18.971 --> 00:21:33.230
It's still better than, you know, other transition fuels, obviously ammonia being zero carbon will eventually win out, but it'll take time to build up the giant amount of production of it.
00:21:33.260 --> 00:21:33.530
Right.
00:21:33.530 --> 00:21:41.320
I mean, the market for ammonia today for fertilizer in total is about 78 billion in 2022.
00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:42.250
Okay.
00:21:42.250 --> 00:21:42.651
So it's.
00:21:42.836 --> 00:21:49.066
something more than that now, but it's expected to be 130 billion by 2030.
00:21:49.076 --> 00:21:53.006
And that's just for fertilizer and the current uses, right?
00:21:53.076 --> 00:21:55.236
Not even using it as a fuel.
00:21:55.536 --> 00:21:58.455
And how much is the market for diesel fuel in the market?
00:21:58.526 --> 00:22:00.816
That measure diesel fuels in the trillion, right?
00:22:00.915 --> 00:22:05.336
And, and you need two gallons of ammonia for every gallon of gasoline.
00:22:05.665 --> 00:22:09.405
So the amount of ammonia we have to increase in production, right?
00:22:09.566 --> 00:22:22.425
is just staggering also, but the plastic problem is staggering and solving that and solving that while making the future of hydrogen fuel is why we're doing plastic to green.
00:22:22.435 --> 00:22:33.506
You're in an interesting place in that if, you know, the world is successful at getting rid of all plastics and all oil based products, well, then you won't have any plastic stock, but you're not banking on that likelihood.
00:22:34.185 --> 00:22:48.215
There'll be a reduction in plastics, but think about The usefulness of where we were as kids, and we had glass bottles for milk, and you drop the glass bottle and crash it breaks on the floor.
00:22:48.556 --> 00:22:53.226
Today, you drop a milk jug and you pick it up and put it back and put it in the fridge, right?
00:22:53.286 --> 00:22:53.855
It doesn't.
00:22:54.260 --> 00:22:55.320
break, typically.
00:22:55.611 --> 00:22:59.490
And so there's uses for plastic that are never going to go away.
00:22:59.820 --> 00:23:16.391
Um, I was just looking at something, you know, maybe it doesn't, it has more than one use, but the plastic printer from Hewlett Packard on my, on my desk, the day that needs to, you know, go in the trash today, that would go in the trash and go to the landfill.
00:23:17.070 --> 00:23:30.681
But we can take that kind of a, even though it has 13 different plastics inside of it between the rollers and the, and the guides and the plastic shell on the outside, even the electronics, we can take that too.
00:23:30.840 --> 00:23:34.101
I was going to say the metals in there, because there's like rods holding the rollers on and stuff.
00:23:34.520 --> 00:24:03.080
They come out in the earlier stages of our process and eventually we'll get better and better about taking the metals and being able to separate them and based on their melting point and be able to get all the aluminums out one direction and all the steel out another direction and, you know, you know, the gold and, you know, the things in the electronics, the copper, you know, will come out and eventually it'll either be, you know, go to somebody who's going to try and extract that.
00:24:03.330 --> 00:24:06.951
Gold and copper out of the steel or whatever.
00:24:07.300 --> 00:24:17.510
Um, but, you know, for the most part, we'll get a, an ingot that can go to a metal recycler who can then metallurgically, you know, take it apart.
00:24:17.851 --> 00:24:19.500
And that's pretty standard in the metal.
00:24:19.861 --> 00:24:21.631
metallurgical industry.
00:24:21.631 --> 00:24:24.480
It's pretty well understood how to separate different kinds of metals.
00:24:24.990 --> 00:24:33.340
We won't be doing that, but we will be taking all the metals and ingots you can selling all the ingots we can and selling all the carbon.
00:24:33.340 --> 00:24:38.391
We can, our, our biggest volume output will be train cars full of carbon.
00:24:38.871 --> 00:24:42.211
You know, that will go to tire industry and other places.
00:24:42.211 --> 00:24:45.951
Um, Michelin and Bridgestone have asked for only.
00:24:46.405 --> 00:25:08.185
Uh, recycled carbon black, and so we'll have a unique recycled carbon black, and, you know, we're hoping to make some of our carbon much higher quality than the, than the tire industry requires, but, you know, we'll, The majority still needs to go to somebody who is a high volume user.
00:25:08.186 --> 00:25:20.395
And therefore, you know, Michelin and Bridgestone are on our list of companies we need to talk to, because ideally they're asking for carbon black coming from recycled tires.
00:25:20.770 --> 00:25:23.560
But tire recycling is a whole nother animal.
00:25:23.951 --> 00:25:31.361
And we are hoping to be able to take 10 percent tires overall, but there's still so much plastic.
00:25:31.371 --> 00:25:36.570
That's so much easier for us to break down than trying to break down tires.
00:25:36.611 --> 00:25:40.461
And tire recycling is, is sort of a different.
00:25:41.171 --> 00:25:41.951
That's a different puzzle.
00:25:41.961 --> 00:25:43.260
We'll do that with the next startup.
00:25:44.351 --> 00:25:50.411
Again, it'll be part of our company, but not 100 percent of our volume.
00:25:51.151 --> 00:25:54.060
Hopefully, we'll just design it to handle 10%.
00:25:54.911 --> 00:25:58.641
Partly because we have to handle certain levels of scrubbing.
00:25:59.036 --> 00:26:13.865
Whenever, if we're going to have a chemical plant with no smokestack, whatever is coming in, we have to be able to capture and, and hold onto and figure out where we're doing that kind of heat and melting all these things down with no smokestack, no smokestack.
00:26:13.875 --> 00:26:15.776
It's not a combustion process.
00:26:15.776 --> 00:26:18.385
It's a non combustion process.
00:26:18.635 --> 00:26:31.651
So We're essentially using my past combustion engineering in reverse to make sure that we absolutely never combust because, you know, that usually goes boom.
00:26:31.651 --> 00:26:35.580
Problems would happen at the pace that you're talking about moving material through here.
00:26:35.590 --> 00:26:44.715
And so we're going to use my old technology from MIT in reverse to make sure that we don't combust and we don't burn anything.
00:26:44.726 --> 00:26:51.425
Everything will be, uh, you know, essentially disassociated in a nitrogen environment.
00:26:51.915 --> 00:26:56.935
Um, cause we need that nitrogen hot also for the ammonia process anyway.
00:26:57.336 --> 00:26:58.766
And, uh, then we.
00:26:58.851 --> 00:26:59.941
Keep things from burning.
00:26:59.941 --> 00:27:04.820
And then we collect all the chemistry coming out and do something with it.
00:27:05.351 --> 00:27:14.401
Something useful, something circular, something like I said, to get the chlorine from PVC back to the people making PVC.
00:27:14.721 --> 00:27:20.721
So that chlorine they're using in their process to make their plastic comes from the plastic in the first place.
00:27:21.461 --> 00:27:27.040
And, you know, getting all of it is obviously a challenge, but getting, getting enough of it.
00:27:27.205 --> 00:27:37.476
For them to make a significant dent in where they get their chlorine today, which technically can come from seawater because there's chlorine and salt.
00:27:37.945 --> 00:27:39.415
And so salt is HCL.
00:27:41.306 --> 00:27:54.895
So therefore, you know, giving them back their chlorine that came out of their plastic and keeping that plastic out of the landfill and that, you know, chemistry from, you know, infecting our oceans and affecting our food.
00:27:54.895 --> 00:27:55.175
Yeah.
00:27:55.476 --> 00:28:12.036
You know, then the more challenging chemical is the PFOS chemicals, which basically is your Teflon cutting board that you have at home that everybody says, Oh, that's the cutting board to use when you're cutting your, your meat, because it, it holds onto less bacteria.
00:28:12.046 --> 00:28:18.395
Well, that's not really true, but, um, it is, you know, I'm a wood guy.
00:28:18.796 --> 00:28:19.175
I'm old school.
00:28:19.226 --> 00:28:20.395
I'm a wood guy too.
00:28:21.076 --> 00:28:28.365
And so anyway, but plastic cutting boards are made of Teflon, and Teflon is a forever chemical.
00:28:28.776 --> 00:28:38.006
So in the, in the environment, you could lay a Teflon cutting board in the sun, and it would sit there for 3, 000 years, not without breaking down.
00:28:38.605 --> 00:28:39.875
It would take 3, 000 years.
00:28:39.895 --> 00:28:40.215
Right.
00:28:40.506 --> 00:28:44.635
for even the sun in the sun to break it down in a landfill of three million.
00:28:44.685 --> 00:28:45.885
Yeah, exactly.
00:28:45.895 --> 00:28:53.205
And so being able to take that and then do something with the fluorine, we're going to obviously have to take it.
00:28:54.165 --> 00:28:57.205
Fortunately, it has a much higher melting point.
00:28:57.526 --> 00:29:00.715
So we will put it in what we call our third oven.
00:29:01.125 --> 00:29:03.506
And when we go to even higher temperature to break.
00:29:03.536 --> 00:29:08.851
So it's like Anything that's left after these first two phases, we'll just hit that with the superheater.
00:29:08.911 --> 00:29:10.441
Hit that with the superheater.
00:29:10.800 --> 00:29:36.145
And then the only thing we'll have left in that of high temperature stuff is silicon and, and the, uh, fluorinated plastics, which there happened to be a lot of, um, uh, 3m just lost 10 billion in a lawsuit for, for a, for a PFAS chemical in a, some product that they made that was poisoning people.
00:29:36.155 --> 00:29:41.796
So even though it's a forever chemical, it still is a poison in some respect.
00:29:41.806 --> 00:29:48.066
And so we have to be able to take that as well because it's a plastic.
00:29:48.076 --> 00:29:52.655
And so again, then we have to be able to take that fluorine out.
00:29:53.016 --> 00:29:56.346
Are we going to sell it back to the people making fluorinated plastics?
00:29:56.385 --> 00:29:58.655
No, we actually have to figure out how to.
00:29:59.040 --> 00:30:08.070
bury that in cement, and we're actually probably going to bury that in the silicon and, and, and sell that sand back to cement makers.
00:30:08.080 --> 00:30:13.861
So that fluorinated those fluorine molecules, which came out of rock.
00:30:14.296 --> 00:30:19.965
Originally, and get put back into rock to hopefully hold on to them for another million years.
00:30:19.965 --> 00:30:23.796
And then they're trapped in there, and they're good, it won't hurt anybody using the concrete, whatever.
00:30:23.855 --> 00:30:26.905
I'm pretty sure it won't, but I, again We'll do some research.
00:30:27.115 --> 00:30:31.236
We'll do research to make sure that it gets safely It's not like radioactive or anything, right?
00:30:31.236 --> 00:30:31.365
No.
00:30:31.375 --> 00:30:35.395
So as long as it's It's just physically separated from the environment, right?
00:30:35.855 --> 00:30:44.736
And then we'll still get the hydrogen and carbon out of the rest of those Fluorinated plastic you talked about this blank carbon that we had our block carbon.
00:30:44.766 --> 00:30:47.405
Did you call it black carbon carbon black carbon black?
00:30:47.405 --> 00:30:54.276
So that's different than the monotubes that you talked about before That's like the super high quality stuff is the little monotubes and then the rest is Right.
00:30:54.375 --> 00:30:58.215
Carbon black is what's in everything black.
00:30:58.217 --> 00:30:59.276
That black cup right there.
00:30:59.286 --> 00:31:00.326
That black cup right here.
00:31:00.645 --> 00:31:02.226
My phone case, you know.
00:31:03.455 --> 00:31:08.395
Literally everything black today is carbon black, as the ink.
00:31:08.425 --> 00:31:12.945
Your ink cartridge in your printer is printing out carbon black onto your paper.
00:31:13.455 --> 00:31:15.905
Um, so, it's everywhere.
00:31:15.945 --> 00:31:21.151
Um, you know, just think, look at something black, whether it's Black anything.
00:31:21.151 --> 00:31:22.270
Our earphone thingies.
00:31:22.340 --> 00:31:22.661
Yep.
00:31:22.740 --> 00:31:31.891
It's all made using carbon black, whether it's, you know, as the ink or it's buried in the actual substrate of the plastic to make it black.
00:31:31.901 --> 00:31:39.701
So is your, uh, is your racing team feeling neglected now that you've got this new plastic to green thing you're probably taking a lot of time spending on?
00:31:39.851 --> 00:31:45.530
Well, fortunately I didn't have a very big team, and so my one, one other partner in that company is.
00:31:45.531 --> 00:31:45.726
Yeah.
00:31:45.796 --> 00:32:05.945
off doing some other startup work and, and we'll, we'll get back to him when, when plastic to green can sponsor the sailboat, building our cash cow here real quick, real quick as relative 10 years would be a big success, I'm sure we have a chance to be a big success in 10 years.
00:32:05.945 --> 00:32:06.476
Yeah, no.
00:32:06.516 --> 00:32:12.375
That seems like the, my detector of good ideas was ringing pretty loud when we were talking at the.
00:32:12.611 --> 00:32:14.171
Verboten brewing there the other day.
00:32:14.951 --> 00:32:19.211
Um, tell me about the process when you do burn ammonia.
00:32:20.040 --> 00:32:20.480
Okay.
00:32:20.520 --> 00:32:22.740
You said that's, what is the chemical compound of that?
00:32:23.121 --> 00:32:24.851
NH3, nitrogen.
00:32:24.851 --> 00:32:25.931
So, um.
00:32:26.080 --> 00:32:27.911
I don't know if it burns or if it does something else.
00:32:27.921 --> 00:32:29.290
It's fancier still.
00:32:29.310 --> 00:32:33.181
If you chemically modify it, it burns extremely well.
00:32:33.181 --> 00:32:33.381
Okay.
00:32:33.451 --> 00:32:36.310
Because it's the precursor to TNT.
00:32:36.540 --> 00:32:36.810
Oh.
00:32:37.711 --> 00:32:37.931
Okay.
00:32:38.010 --> 00:32:38.671
Dynamite.
00:32:38.836 --> 00:32:45.465
is made from ammonia that goes into ammonium nitrate that goes into something else that makes TNT.
00:32:45.496 --> 00:32:50.586
I don't, I don't know the whole process and I don't need to know that whole process.
00:32:50.596 --> 00:33:01.415
So it's funny because we've been approached by two different manufacturers of, of dynamite that are like, yeah, we'd really like to make green dynamite.
00:33:03.415 --> 00:33:12.671
I scratched my head and go, Okay, we can help you do it, but again, the real reason they want to do it is because we can make ammonia cheaper than they can now.
00:33:13.240 --> 00:33:17.480
And it's the cheaper ammonia that they really They want cheap dynamite, not green dynamite.
00:33:17.480 --> 00:33:18.181
Exactly.
00:33:18.661 --> 00:33:22.351
If they can be green and cheap, then that's why they're going to do it.
00:33:22.861 --> 00:33:24.601
And so it's really funny.
00:33:24.641 --> 00:33:28.611
But, um, uh, back to how do you combust it?
00:33:29.010 --> 00:33:36.550
Ammonia, the reason I like it as a combustion engineer is because it does not ignite in, at room temperature and pressure.
00:33:36.550 --> 00:33:40.141
So you can have a leak and you can bring out a lighter and try and light it.
00:33:40.361 --> 00:33:41.550
It will not explode.
00:33:41.550 --> 00:33:44.971
It will not burn at atmospheric temperature and pressure.
00:33:45.010 --> 00:33:48.036
My, is it, because it's Burn your eyes and stuff, right?
00:33:48.036 --> 00:33:49.026
Well, that's a different thing.
00:33:49.026 --> 00:33:54.465
I mean, we've stayed cautious around the, uh, anhydrous ammonia, or maybe that's a little different material.
00:33:54.476 --> 00:33:55.695
No, that's exactly what it is.
00:33:55.695 --> 00:33:56.086
Same stuff.
00:33:56.125 --> 00:33:57.066
What's anhydrous mean?
00:33:57.125 --> 00:33:59.326
Anhydrous just means without water.
00:33:59.415 --> 00:33:59.836
Oh, okay.
00:33:59.846 --> 00:34:07.546
So what you have as ammonia under your sink is 95 percent water and 5 percent ammonia, and it's still stinky, right?
00:34:07.546 --> 00:34:08.275
Right, right.
00:34:08.275 --> 00:34:15.715
But when it's anhydrous or water free, now it's, uh, you know, very stinky and it'll make your eyes water.
00:34:16.050 --> 00:34:18.371
more from an acidic reaction.
00:34:18.481 --> 00:34:18.710
Okay.
00:34:18.840 --> 00:34:39.021
It'll, uh, it also, it doesn't really, I mean, I think it hurts your lungs, but I don't, you know, it's not that you, it's the stingingness of the poison is more of a, it's more like it stops your reaction is to stop breathing and it's like, yeah, it's like getting a wind knocked out of you almost if you do catch a whiff.
00:34:39.041 --> 00:34:39.990
Exactly.
00:34:40.070 --> 00:34:43.351
And so you don't want to breathe it and that's why you stop breathing.
00:34:43.351 --> 00:34:44.380
That's what can kill you.
00:34:45.391 --> 00:34:48.311
Run away from an ammonia leak.
00:34:48.641 --> 00:34:58.481
Unfortunately, a very standard, little bit special than what you would buy at a hardware store, but a fairly standard respirator.
00:34:58.880 --> 00:35:00.570
Make sure I say that correctly.
00:35:00.670 --> 00:35:04.811
Uh, you can walk into an ammonia leak with no problem and breathe normally.
00:35:04.860 --> 00:35:08.110
Oh, cause it's a big molecule that that respirator can screen out pretty easy.
00:35:08.121 --> 00:35:08.701
Screen it out.
00:35:08.811 --> 00:35:09.061
Huh.
00:35:09.130 --> 00:35:21.201
And so, it's really good that, you know, you, you can for fairly, you know, you want to have the respirator that covers your eyes also, cause your eyes will be stinging and you'd close them and not be able to see.
00:35:21.510 --> 00:35:27.570
So if you just put a respirator mask over your whole face, you can walk right in and go solve the leak.
00:35:27.771 --> 00:35:27.851
Huh.
00:35:27.871 --> 00:35:34.936
The other thing you can do is, because, uh, ammonia loves water, you can literally just spray the area with water.
00:35:35.016 --> 00:35:35.416
Oh, right.
00:35:35.416 --> 00:35:36.865
It'll just grab onto those molecules.
00:35:36.865 --> 00:35:41.536
It'll just grab onto those molecules and wash it down as fertilizer going down the drain.
00:35:41.565 --> 00:35:41.865
Right.
00:35:41.865 --> 00:35:44.856
And so, it's a very, you know, it's very, comparably safe.
00:35:44.865 --> 00:35:47.835
Comparably, less volatile than gasoline everywhere and whatever.
00:35:47.835 --> 00:35:50.635
Less volatile than gasoline, less volatile than, than.
00:35:50.675 --> 00:35:59.876
like a lithium ion battery exploding, which can even explode or at least catch fire even underwater where lithium burns underwater.
00:36:00.186 --> 00:36:06.650
So the fact that an ammonia leak can be stopped by a standard fire department is pretty good.
00:36:06.650 --> 00:36:07.213
Right.
00:36:07.213 --> 00:36:07.775
Right.
00:36:07.775 --> 00:36:09.811
I'm sure there's a lot of fire departments that are kind of cool.
00:36:10.471 --> 00:36:15.320
Watching some of those videos you see online and going like the look of that, right?
00:36:15.420 --> 00:36:16.371
Exactly fun.
00:36:17.001 --> 00:36:22.391
So, um, And it's actually PFAS chemicals that you need to put out a lithium fire.
00:36:22.780 --> 00:36:25.170
So here you are spraying down a lithium, right?
00:36:25.561 --> 00:36:35.990
With PFAS chemicals that are poisoning the environment, you know after with whatever right forever after that Right forever after that interesting forever.
00:36:36.001 --> 00:36:36.570
Literally.
00:36:37.110 --> 00:36:40.291
I mean, that's why they're also called forever Chemicals.
00:36:40.331 --> 00:36:43.202
Well, when you say PFOS, is it phosphorus or what are you talking about?
00:36:43.202 --> 00:36:43.380
No.
00:36:43.380 --> 00:36:45.050
The F is the fluorine.
00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:45.570
Oh, okay.
00:36:45.572 --> 00:36:56.371
And, and I don't know what all the other symbols stand for, but there's two different ways of making the acronym with a P F O S and a P F A S, but all of those.
00:36:56.411 --> 00:36:57.090
They're all yucky.
00:36:57.130 --> 00:36:57.670
They're all.
00:36:57.672 --> 00:36:58.521
They're all yucky.
00:36:58.931 --> 00:37:06.581
You know, going to be here forever and, and the challenge is, um, water treatment plants don't know what to do with them.
00:37:06.940 --> 00:37:18.460
So they basically get them in their solids and then they spread their solids that they get out of the, out of the water treatment plant on a field and that just dries up and blows away.
00:37:18.530 --> 00:37:25.300
And so the reason we have so many PFAS chemicals in our environment is because of the fact that it's.
00:37:25.780 --> 00:37:26.311
It's blowing.
00:37:26.331 --> 00:37:29.130
Is that those microplastics you hear about sometimes?
00:37:29.550 --> 00:37:33.690
Most of microplastics are PFAS because they don't break down.
00:37:34.400 --> 00:37:37.411
They're going to be here for 3000 years.
00:37:37.880 --> 00:37:42.150
It's little tiny particles and we're just spreading them on field like butter.
00:37:42.231 --> 00:37:42.621
Right.
00:37:42.621 --> 00:37:47.351
And then of course it doesn't stay there when that storm blows up and blows them away.
00:37:47.351 --> 00:37:50.291
That's one storm we just had last weekend taking it a long ways.
00:37:50.340 --> 00:37:51.201
Exactly.
00:37:51.621 --> 00:37:53.320
And so I didn't, I wasn't really aware.
00:37:53.320 --> 00:37:53.800
That's really the.
00:37:53.856 --> 00:38:05.686
bulk of the environmental, or a significant amount of the environmental contamination is we've already pulled it out of the sewage plants and stuff, but then we don't know what to do with it from there.
00:38:05.735 --> 00:38:06.036
Right.
00:38:06.065 --> 00:38:08.226
And that's why we're going to be able to take that.
00:38:08.675 --> 00:38:20.956
And obviously we'll take a little more money to take that, but it's going to be regulated here pretty soon, but it has to be disposed of, needs to be disposed of properly.
00:38:21.545 --> 00:38:22.615
Whether or not we can.
00:38:22.681 --> 00:38:27.940
take the dirt part out before we put it through our plant or not is still to be determined.
00:38:27.940 --> 00:38:35.110
So hopefully there's a way to get the PFAS chemicals to either float or sink or do something different than the dirt.
00:38:35.181 --> 00:38:35.570
Right.
00:38:35.581 --> 00:38:44.110
So we don't have to put so much dirt through our plant, but we will if we have to in order to keep those PFAS chemicals out of the environment.
00:38:44.221 --> 00:38:44.731
Interesting.
00:38:45.101 --> 00:38:48.411
And you say a plant, uh, what are you, I guess.
00:38:48.820 --> 00:38:50.210
What are you imagining needing?
00:38:50.240 --> 00:38:53.331
Are you raising capital right now for this venture?
00:38:53.340 --> 00:38:57.050
We're raising capital, uh, for early stage.
00:38:57.090 --> 00:39:12.221
We, but we have some significant capital available to us from the department of energy because they have a, what's called a title 17 loan program, and they're loaning money only to innovative ways of making hydrogen.
00:39:12.731 --> 00:39:28.275
And so they are trying to help stand up the hydrogen economy, With 72 billion for hydrogen, but they'll loan us the money, but they're only loan us the money when we show that we're at a technology readiness level eight.
00:39:28.635 --> 00:39:31.735
And right now we're at technology readiness level five.
00:39:32.471 --> 00:39:32.860
Okay.
00:39:33.061 --> 00:39:44.150
Because we're using all off the shelf equipment, so the medical waste destruction front end and then the gas separators and then the ammonia back end, that's all off the shelf equipment.
00:39:44.510 --> 00:39:47.661
So we're fairly far along for a startup that's only a year old.
00:39:47.661 --> 00:39:47.831
Yeah.
00:39:47.831 --> 00:39:48.130
Yeah.
00:39:48.340 --> 00:39:55.610
Invalidating that with this supplier, this supplier and this supplier, we're at technology readiness level five.
00:39:56.030 --> 00:40:04.360
But originally they said you only needed to be at technology readiness level six in order to get the billion dollar loan.
00:40:04.771 --> 00:40:08.670
And, and so we said, okay, here's how we're going to get to technology ready now.
00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:16.460
This level six by doing testing at this supplier, this supplier and this supplier and not actually building our own prototype.
00:40:16.951 --> 00:40:26.001
Well between when the loan program started in December, six months later, they basically came back and said, well, we've changed our minds.
00:40:26.001 --> 00:40:30.630
We really, to give you a prototype to be a billion dollar loan.
00:40:30.971 --> 00:40:35.121
We really need to be at a higher technology readiness level than just six.
00:40:35.541 --> 00:40:40.731
And so that's put about a three year timeline into our original timeline.
00:40:42.021 --> 00:40:42.900
But that's okay.
00:40:42.920 --> 00:40:45.981
Now we're building a concept lab.
00:40:46.931 --> 00:40:51.481
We're building it in a trailer in order to make sure that that is mobile.
00:40:51.931 --> 00:40:58.920
Um, in order to be able to take it to our different, uh, potential strategic partners that are gonna give us their plastic.
00:40:59.221 --> 00:41:06.391
And so we want to be able to test, you're just gonna like, throw it into this bucket and or the cistern thing and the plastic goes through and Yeah.
00:41:06.396 --> 00:41:08.911
And out comes the carbon and the, and ammonia.
00:41:09.360 --> 00:41:16.320
Um, that first, uh, you know, mobile lab will just do ammonia and, and carbon black.
00:41:16.380 --> 00:41:16.650
Yeah.
00:41:16.710 --> 00:41:16.965
And then.
00:41:17.471 --> 00:41:42.320
Then we'll build a fancier, uh, pilot plant somewhere here in Colorado to validate the whole process and get the 2, 000 hours of runtime necessary, that's three months of 24 7 operation that we need to be able to demonstrate the technology to the Department of Energy so that from there we can get the, a year or so later, get the billion dollar loan done.
00:41:42.385 --> 00:41:50.536
So we can stand up where now our target is to put up three, uh, 500 ton per day plants in the United States.
00:41:51.615 --> 00:42:11.795
Now those plants will be on the Mississippi river, on the Hudson river, you know, in places where there are very large sources of plastic that we can bring down the river, you know, or, you know, in the San Francisco Bay area, some places like that, where we can bring in enough plastic by barge and be able to take out.
00:42:11.931 --> 00:42:15.400
ammonia and carbon black by barge or by train.
00:42:15.871 --> 00:42:32.820
And so it's a very challenging to find these places, but technically over time, just to keep up with the plastic problem just in the U S alone, we'll eventually need 40 or 50 plants in the United States just to keep up with the plastic problem.
00:42:33.021 --> 00:42:33.371
Wow.
00:42:34.431 --> 00:42:41.706
What, uh, Um, so this qualifies for the hydrin, hydrogen funding because it's the NH, right?
00:42:41.726 --> 00:42:42.746
That's Right.
00:42:42.846 --> 00:42:45.646
So Ammonia is considered a hydrogen fuel.
00:42:45.715 --> 00:42:46.155
Okay.
00:42:46.505 --> 00:42:55.496
That's when one of the challenges I've had, uh, when I hear people talking about moving from oil to hydrogen or, you know, whatever, hydrogen is going to be power of our future.
00:42:55.565 --> 00:43:00.576
I'm like, well, we should do more nuclear because hydrogen seems really scary and dangerous, but Correct.
00:43:00.596 --> 00:43:02.365
Frankly, even just talking about ammonia.
00:43:02.367 --> 00:43:02.436
Ammonia.
00:43:03.016 --> 00:43:04.376
Makes it seem a lot less scary.
00:43:04.715 --> 00:43:05.175
Yes.
00:43:05.525 --> 00:43:07.775
I never finished answering your other question.
00:43:07.775 --> 00:43:08.076
Oh, yes.
00:43:08.077 --> 00:43:12.126
Um, which is, how does it burn when it doesn't burn?
00:43:12.525 --> 00:43:14.485
Um, well, there's two ways to burn it.
00:43:14.536 --> 00:43:16.905
One way is to mix it with another fuel.
00:43:16.905 --> 00:43:26.905
So a lot of the, uh, big ships that run on giant diesel engines will still use the diesel fuel as the pilot in ignition.
00:43:27.215 --> 00:43:30.675
So about three to five percent diesel fuel.
00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:32.791
You know, just to start the flame.
00:43:32.791 --> 00:43:33.231
Yeah, yeah.
00:43:33.291 --> 00:43:35.951
And when that ignites just from compression, Right.
00:43:36.030 --> 00:43:40.240
That will then ignite the ammonia and get the ammonia broken apart.
00:43:40.280 --> 00:43:46.621
Once it breaks apart into hydrogen and nitrogen, it basically burns fairly easily.
00:43:46.621 --> 00:43:50.440
You know, actually fairly quickly when it's in the form of hydrogen.
00:43:50.440 --> 00:43:58.960
So hydrogen burns faster and ammonia burns extremely slowly when it's actually burning by itself.
00:43:58.971 --> 00:44:02.510
You can get it going, but it usually takes a pilot fuel.
00:44:03.141 --> 00:44:05.630
So the other approach is actually using a.
00:44:05.695 --> 00:44:10.315
cracking catalyst to take some of the ammonia apart.
00:44:10.735 --> 00:44:20.126
So you break some of the ammonia apart into hydrogen and nitrogen, and then you mix it because ammonia is a gas at room temperature and pressure.
00:44:20.646 --> 00:44:28.065
And so you put the gas into the engine, direct injection, or port injection, doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.
00:44:28.065 --> 00:44:28.576
It doesn't matter.
00:44:28.576 --> 00:44:40.536
But you then, with 30 percent hydrogen and 70 percent ammonia, your fast burning hydrogen mixed with your slow burning ammonia gives you a burning rate of almost identical to gasoline.
00:44:41.215 --> 00:44:45.045
And so that's how you can burn it without needing a pilot fuel.
00:44:45.396 --> 00:44:48.496
You use some of its, of itself broken apart.
00:44:48.496 --> 00:44:49.936
Is that like a mechanical cracker?
00:44:50.016 --> 00:44:55.255
No, it's catalytic and it's high temperature or it's ultraviolet light.
00:44:55.476 --> 00:44:55.686
Oh.
00:44:55.715 --> 00:44:57.666
You know, can, you know, cause that's actually how.
00:44:58.190 --> 00:45:15.766
ammonia breaks down in the environment, it breaks down from sunlight, and when ammonia breaks down from sunlight in the field, you know, the nitrogen is available to the, because you want the nitrogen for the plants, you want it to be left behind.
00:45:16.255 --> 00:45:17.206
Oh, okay.
00:45:17.445 --> 00:45:18.476
I'm starting to understand more.
00:45:18.485 --> 00:45:24.635
Because, you know, nitrogen is the key component that they need for the fertilizer for the plants.
00:45:24.686 --> 00:45:25.076
Right.
00:45:25.775 --> 00:45:36.626
I have to say, uh, conducting an interview with you is different than many of my guests because I have to, like, not just listen, because that's always part of it, but I have to think as well if I'm going to, uh, keep up.
00:45:38.056 --> 00:45:38.896
Keep up, Buttercup.
00:45:39.436 --> 00:45:42.346
Um, so you're an MIT guy.
00:45:42.356 --> 00:45:45.331
You've had a lot of experience, um, in that field.
00:45:45.661 --> 00:45:50.561
Extra smart people then, but you've kind of hung around Colorado your whole career.
00:45:50.570 --> 00:45:58.010
Only, I ran a company, uh, Adrenaline Research as a spin out from MIT in the suburbs of Boston.
00:45:58.190 --> 00:45:58.490
Okay.
00:45:58.521 --> 00:46:01.451
And so that was my MIT spin out company.
00:46:01.871 --> 00:46:08.925
And, um, I ran that for 14 years and then sold it to Woodward and Woodward brought me to Colorado.
00:46:08.956 --> 00:46:18.376
So I've been here in Colorado for 20 years now, five years working for Woodward and then spun out with a Van Dyne Super Turbo.
00:46:18.445 --> 00:46:18.746
Yeah.
00:46:18.795 --> 00:46:36.295
And then, uh, Um, moved on to, uh, wave solar technology, which was a, a sun, yeah, um, a thermal solar technology that, you know, one didn't work quite as we thought it might, but it was also based on solar thermal technology.
00:46:36.436 --> 00:46:36.985
Power.
00:46:37.385 --> 00:46:50.516
And, um, at that time, the, um, the every other solar PV company in the country was going bankrupt because the Chinese were used of dumping solar panels on the United States.
00:46:50.525 --> 00:46:50.965
Right, right.
00:46:51.226 --> 00:46:52.025
Oh, my God.
00:46:52.076 --> 00:47:04.510
But You know, I couldn't get any funding for a very different solar technology, you know, at a time when it was blacklisted because of every other solar company bankruptcy.
00:47:04.911 --> 00:47:14.210
So I gave up on that and, uh, started, you know, went off to California and, and moved to California, lived there for two years and, okay.
00:47:14.596 --> 00:47:18.615
And then came back to start the solar, to start the sailboat company.
00:47:18.617 --> 00:47:24.335
And so it's been a whirlwind tour with COVID in the middle.
00:47:24.335 --> 00:47:28.916
And I had a job at a winery during COVID.
00:47:28.965 --> 00:47:37.666
And that's when I started building my sailboat and they had a scrap yard of stainless steel in the back of the, the winery shop.
00:47:38.175 --> 00:47:46.456
And I asked the boss if I could have some of that, stainless steel tubing in the backyard and I built my first tetrahedron in the welding shop.
00:47:46.545 --> 00:47:54.405
Now was this just like an idea or a dream that came to you this tetrahedron shape and applying that to a sailboat or?
00:47:54.456 --> 00:48:00.476
I had actually applied for a patent and I decided I'd apply for the patent myself.
00:48:00.476 --> 00:48:07.735
I'd written so many patents before, uh, back in The year I moved here, so, um, probably 2004.
00:48:07.735 --> 00:48:08.076
Okay.
00:48:08.186 --> 00:48:11.976
And that was a tetrahedron, a patent for a tetrahedron sailboat.
00:48:12.076 --> 00:48:12.295
Oh.
00:48:12.576 --> 00:48:20.186
But, I, you know, being naive or being new to writing my own patents, I checked the wrong box.
00:48:20.235 --> 00:48:23.925
I checked the design patent box, not the utility.
00:48:25.275 --> 00:48:37.606
And so when I got feedback from the patent office that they were, you know, you know, You know, you know, every patent comes back, they're going to deny the patent for some reason.
00:48:37.635 --> 00:48:38.155
Right, right.
00:48:38.315 --> 00:48:44.014
And I went and checked with a lawyer and he said, well, what's the point of pursuing this patent?
00:48:44.014 --> 00:48:45.335
You don't want this design patent anyway.
00:48:45.346 --> 00:49:06.311
Because, no, a design patent is very, like a patent that here's, If you're doing something like a drawing or a, I'm trying to think of the right terminology, like a piece of artwork can be a design patent, but a piece of technology has to be a utility patent because someone just changes one thing.
00:49:06.431 --> 00:49:17.590
on the drawing and they violate, they don't violate your patent because they changed one tiny little thing, whereas a utility patent is about the idea and you're in you.
00:49:17.621 --> 00:49:21.550
And so I basically filed, checked the wrong box.
00:49:21.860 --> 00:49:27.400
Had I checked the right box or checked with somebody before I checked that box, I would have done better.
00:49:27.400 --> 00:49:32.501
So I actually have a patent filed on this sailboat from 20 years ago.
00:49:32.670 --> 00:49:33.400
Oh, interesting.
00:49:33.402 --> 00:49:33.436
Interesting.
00:49:33.436 --> 00:49:33.471
Interesting.
00:49:33.472 --> 00:49:34.190
from 2004.
00:49:34.192 --> 00:49:36.161
It's been simmering for a while.
00:49:36.221 --> 00:49:41.050
It's been simmering for a while, and I'm like, here I am in a, in a, with a pile of tubing.
00:49:41.331 --> 00:49:44.141
I'm gonna go build my tetrahedron sailboat.
00:49:44.610 --> 00:50:17.460
And so I've, I came up with some other patentable ideas, and I do have one patent filed for the, uh, For that company, but the overarching idea of the tetrahedron sailboat by itself using a tetrahedron to make a sailboat out of is not, you know, something I'll be able to patent because one, I filed it already to somebody else had something similar from years before anyway, so it's really, you just have to set the world speed record and then people will notice exactly by your sale accessories or different things.
00:50:17.461 --> 00:50:17.530
Yeah.
00:50:17.530 --> 00:50:17.800
Yeah.
00:50:18.545 --> 00:50:35.295
Um, I wanna, we usually, uh, jump in the time machine and go all the way back, and I'd like to spend a little more time on Van Dyne's Super Turbo in particular, but also here are some of these other chapters, but Um, can we go back to, to Little Ed, uh, as a seven year old or something like that?
00:50:35.326 --> 00:50:36.045
Where were you at?
00:50:36.056 --> 00:50:39.655
Seven year old Little Ed, um, was having trouble reading.
00:50:39.815 --> 00:50:40.076
Oh.
00:50:40.146 --> 00:50:52.981
And so my, uh, I would try and read the book Dick and Jane when I was about six and my younger brother was about three and he could guess the words faster than I could read them because I was dyslexic.
00:50:53.311 --> 00:50:57.971
Basically the, you know, cat looked like T, you know, C, A or something.
00:50:57.981 --> 00:50:58.940
Right, right.
00:50:59.101 --> 00:51:02.351
I don't know what that word is, you know, because I couldn't see it.
00:51:02.360 --> 00:51:06.431
You know, I just, everything was mixed up, numbers, letters.
00:51:06.880 --> 00:51:13.030
And so, um, it was very annoying to me that, you know, my mom just stopped trying to teach me to read.
00:51:13.501 --> 00:51:22.300
And, and so I, again, little Ed felt, you know, abandoned by his teacher mother who wasn't willing to teach him anymore.
00:51:22.690 --> 00:51:28.210
And so I managed to sort of get through school by being a very good listener.
00:51:28.440 --> 00:51:28.670
Right.
00:51:28.690 --> 00:51:31.010
And, you know, and I couldn't take notes.
00:51:31.110 --> 00:51:31.990
The auditory.
00:51:32.001 --> 00:51:42.130
And so I had to just listen and then, you know, I would, you know, read the first chapter, the last chapter, and the title of every chapter in between, and I'd write a book report.
00:51:42.490 --> 00:51:48.721
And you know, and all I cared about was getting a C, you know, because as long as I pass with a C, Is that right?
00:51:48.721 --> 00:51:49.570
You know, it didn't matter.
00:51:49.570 --> 00:51:51.400
You never got diagnosed as dyslexic?
00:51:51.460 --> 00:51:53.311
Oh, I got diagnosed, eventually.
00:51:53.311 --> 00:51:54.311
But they just didn't know what to do about it.
00:51:54.311 --> 00:51:55.451
They didn't.
00:51:55.451 --> 00:51:56.411
They didn't know what.
00:51:56.621 --> 00:52:02.081
Yeah, they didn't they like, you know, a doctor would say he'll outgrow it, right, you know, and things like that.
00:52:02.550 --> 00:52:04.291
And so where were you at?
00:52:05.181 --> 00:52:08.251
Like in the country or I was in Sudbury, Massachusetts.
00:52:08.251 --> 00:52:08.590
Okay.
00:52:09.170 --> 00:52:11.411
My parents moved there when I was 10 years old.
00:52:11.471 --> 00:52:11.800
All right.
00:52:11.851 --> 00:52:17.141
And you know, the classes were challenging and the school was somewhat challenging.
00:52:17.521 --> 00:52:23.371
And so they assumed I was going to go to, you know, You know, the industrial, you know, tech high school.
00:52:23.391 --> 00:52:27.550
But I went to the visit there, actually took a class there in eighth grade.
00:52:27.552 --> 00:52:31.291
Um, and it basically felt like jail, you know?
00:52:31.291 --> 00:52:34.471
And so I'm like, man, this is a weird place.
00:52:34.471 --> 00:52:36.960
You know, it's going to be hard for mom and dad to send me here willingly.
00:52:37.800 --> 00:52:42.141
Well, and so fortunately I took a welding class in eighth grade and, and, and.
00:52:42.456 --> 00:52:51.416
Did pretty well, but I, I had enough of a sense that going to the technical high school was going to be a problem, you know, is going to be jail time.
00:52:51.766 --> 00:53:01.835
And so, um, fortunately our regular high school and that in Sudbury, uh, Lincoln Sudbury high school was extremely well equipped with shop classes.
00:53:02.036 --> 00:53:02.326
Okay.
00:53:02.376 --> 00:53:08.365
And so they had a metal shop, a wood shop, a auto shop, a high, a wood shop.
00:53:08.445 --> 00:53:10.675
A fiberglass shop for making boats.
00:53:10.715 --> 00:53:11.106
Oh, cool.
00:53:11.126 --> 00:53:14.746
Um, they had a really good architecture program.
00:53:15.146 --> 00:53:18.166
Um, trying to think of, there's gotta be at least two or three more.
00:53:18.166 --> 00:53:20.505
An electronic shop, a computer lab.
00:53:20.786 --> 00:53:25.045
We were in the town next to the headquarters of digital equipment corporation.
00:53:25.445 --> 00:53:30.106
So we had a VAX PDP 11, which at the time was.
00:53:30.246 --> 00:53:45.186
Better computer than when I went to college that they had at the college because it was, you know, the, the kids of the deck, you know, executives had the best, you're right at the hub almost of, uh, the technology.
00:53:45.715 --> 00:53:51.755
And so, um, You know, I basically took every, I never had a free period.
00:53:52.206 --> 00:53:54.215
I took every shop class.
00:53:54.255 --> 00:54:12.481
I even passed, you know, automotive, advanced automotive shop class as a freshman and caused two seniors not to graduate because I screwed up the curve on the test for AutoShop, and that, and the two seniors, and two seniors failed.
00:54:12.960 --> 00:54:14.971
Yeah, I got my car keyed a few times.
00:54:15.740 --> 00:54:18.271
Fortunately, I was painting my own cars at the time.
00:54:18.811 --> 00:54:22.130
So, I said, well, I guess I gotta repaint this one.
00:54:22.570 --> 00:54:31.021
So, anyway, you know, so my, my life as a, you know, as a kid was basically repairing cars in my parents garage.
00:54:31.036 --> 00:54:36.815
driveway and my dad, uh, bought me my first 25 car when I was 12.
00:54:37.226 --> 00:54:43.755
And so I fixed that up and sold it and, um, you know, got onto the next car and the next car.
00:54:43.815 --> 00:54:49.646
And so, um, when I was 15, um, I went to the registry one day.
00:54:49.646 --> 00:54:52.436
Of course, I'm driving to the registry by myself.
00:54:52.436 --> 00:54:54.911
Yes.
00:54:55.271 --> 00:54:56.811
We couldn't get one until you were 16.
00:54:57.360 --> 00:55:05.751
And, um, I got to the registry and, um, and the lady says, You can't title another car this year without a license.
00:55:06.251 --> 00:55:07.880
I said, A license for what?
00:55:08.280 --> 00:55:11.471
And she says, A license to be a used car dealer.
00:55:11.851 --> 00:55:13.971
I said, Okay, how much does that cost?
00:55:13.981 --> 00:55:16.576
She said,$435.
00:55:16.996 --> 00:55:20.085
I said, what do I get for my$435?
00:55:20.206 --> 00:55:20.416
Right?
00:55:20.445 --> 00:55:24.126
She said, A repair plate, a discount on insurance.
00:55:24.396 --> 00:55:26.826
Um, the list went on and on and on.
00:55:26.916 --> 00:55:31.045
I said, okay, can you look up one more thing in the rule book?
00:55:31.365 --> 00:55:32.476
And she says, what?
00:55:32.775 --> 00:55:38.251
I said, do you have to have a driver's license right, to get a used car dealer license as she looks and looks?
00:55:38.766 --> 00:55:39.545
She says, nope.
00:55:39.985 --> 00:55:41.675
I said, sign me up.
00:55:43.646 --> 00:55:46.235
So that was quite amusing when I came home.
00:55:46.235 --> 00:55:48.326
Did you keep slinging cars after that for a long time?
00:55:48.326 --> 00:55:52.346
Yeah, until I retired at age 18 to go to college.
00:55:52.405 --> 00:55:52.905
Interesting.
00:55:53.315 --> 00:55:56.806
So you, like, kind of bought and sold and fixed.
00:55:57.295 --> 00:56:02.175
stuff and took all these different classes so you could fix the electrical, you could fix the paint.
00:56:02.266 --> 00:56:13.416
Yep, so when I was a junior in high school, about a year after I got my used car dealer license, um, my guidance counselor came to me and says, you can graduate this spring.
00:56:13.965 --> 00:56:15.715
I'm looking at him going, why?
00:56:16.135 --> 00:56:28.800
You know, and he says, because You have so many credits from all your shop classes that you, all you have to do is sign up for one summer English class to get to, you know, three and a half years of English and you can graduate.
00:56:29.170 --> 00:56:31.911
And so I'm like, I'll think about that.
00:56:32.231 --> 00:56:34.320
And so I literally went home.
00:56:34.320 --> 00:56:36.471
It felt like that afternoon, but it was probably.
00:56:36.715 --> 00:56:43.045
That week sometime, but I walk into the kitchen behind my mother, the teacher, right?
00:56:43.085 --> 00:56:49.556
And she is talking to my aunt without noticing that I'm standing behind her on the other side of the counter.
00:56:49.556 --> 00:56:52.706
And she says, Oh, Ed, he's not going to college.
00:56:52.985 --> 00:56:55.576
He's going to be a mechanic for the rest of his life.
00:56:55.936 --> 00:56:59.155
You know, because, you know, he's making more money in the driveway.
00:56:59.501 --> 00:57:04.021
Then I make as a teacher and she knew that because my dad was my banker.
00:57:04.161 --> 00:57:07.701
And so she's, you know, she had the correct knowledge.
00:57:07.701 --> 00:57:10.380
I didn't quite know what she made for a living, super flattering.
00:57:11.130 --> 00:57:13.990
Well, I felt completely devastated.
00:57:14.471 --> 00:57:18.175
My, my reaction to that comment was, Oh, shit.
00:57:18.186 --> 00:57:30.025
My mom's giving up on me again, you know, here I am, you know, working hard to prove to her that I can, you know, succeed and be smart enough to make it through school.
00:57:30.335 --> 00:57:41.880
And yeah, I didn't care to get better than a C in English class, but I was getting straight A's in math and, you know, And so I had already taken, uh, physics one in, as a junior.
00:57:42.351 --> 00:57:48.981
And so I basically decided at that moment that I was going to college just to prove her wrong.
00:57:50.210 --> 00:57:52.311
Was it just you and your little brother or was there more siblings?
00:57:52.311 --> 00:57:57.380
I have an older sister and she, It was already about to go off to college.
00:57:57.431 --> 00:57:57.791
I see.
00:57:57.840 --> 00:57:59.561
She was only a year older than I was.
00:58:00.550 --> 00:58:08.271
And so, I, you know, said to myself, Okay, I have to sign up for advanced physics, calculus, you know, all these other things.
00:58:08.271 --> 00:58:10.721
So your senior year was a little different than you might have thought it was going to be.
00:58:10.721 --> 00:58:16.710
Yeah, it was a lot tougher, you know, the year than, than, you know, high school had been up until that point.
00:58:16.710 --> 00:58:16.791
Yeah.
00:58:17.215 --> 00:58:20.516
And I still got to take shop classes, but not quite as many.
00:58:20.936 --> 00:58:24.286
And, um, and I just knew I was going to college.
00:58:24.286 --> 00:58:31.735
And, and so even that summer, after she said that I got on a Greyhound bus and took myself on college tours.
00:58:32.706 --> 00:58:36.695
They, they took my brother, took my sister, you know, but not Ed.
00:58:37.036 --> 00:58:41.326
Ed had to take himself all the way to Purdue, Indiana from Boston.
00:58:41.505 --> 00:58:51.335
And to get to, to tour Purdue, to tour, I came back on the way back, went to University of Michigan, went to, um, I didn't know you were leaving though.
00:58:51.346 --> 00:58:53.846
Did they not be like, Hey, maybe we can go to this next one?
00:58:53.856 --> 00:58:58.396
My mom put me on a bus and said, let me know when you come back and you need a ride home.
00:58:58.556 --> 00:58:58.936
Okay.
00:58:58.965 --> 00:59:00.275
And so, yeah.
00:59:00.326 --> 00:59:06.795
And so, it's a very interesting black sheep kind of feeling there with, uh, especially that they were doing those things with your siblings.
00:59:06.960 --> 00:59:16.010
Yep, and so I went to GM Institute as that's where I really wanted to go because they were basically a subset of General Motors.
00:59:16.012 --> 00:59:22.751
They're now called, not Rensselaer, they're called, um, Kettering Institute is what they're called today.
00:59:23.681 --> 00:59:30.481
And, um, I went to Cornell and Rensselaer on the way back on the, on the Greyhound bus.
00:59:30.481 --> 00:59:30.851
Okay.
00:59:30.880 --> 00:59:36.090
So I literally slept on Greyhound buses every night for, for a week and toured.
00:59:36.251 --> 00:59:45.010
You know, five, six different colleges, you know, all by myself at 17 and got back home and there's no internet.
00:59:45.021 --> 00:59:47.471
There's no cell phones, nothing like that.
00:59:47.920 --> 00:59:59.581
You're looking, you're going to the phone booth, looking for a map of the city so you can figure out where 22nd and 54th street intersection is with all my own money earned from making, you know, selling, fixing and selling cars.
01:00:00.081 --> 01:00:08.096
And, um, And so, you know, taking taxi rides from the Greyhound station to get to the schools and things like that.
01:00:08.425 --> 01:00:15.065
It was, you know, challenging and looking at maps to figure out which overnight bus was going to take me the farthest.
01:00:15.135 --> 01:00:15.405
Right.
01:00:15.405 --> 01:00:17.726
So I could actually get a little bit of sleep that night.
01:00:17.726 --> 01:00:20.155
Overshoot your mark and come back the next morning quick.
01:00:20.166 --> 01:00:23.936
I don't remember showering for that whole week.
01:00:23.936 --> 01:00:24.275
But anyway.
01:00:24.275 --> 01:00:26.275
You're probably right by the time you got there, but that's okay.
01:00:26.516 --> 01:00:29.246
I did have changes of clothes, you know.
01:00:29.346 --> 01:00:30.436
So where did you land?
01:00:30.436 --> 01:00:30.505
I don't know.
01:00:30.655 --> 01:00:46.085
And so I ended up, uh, um, fortunately because of my dyslexia, being able to take the, um, the SATs untimed back in my day, the SATs were a major scoreboard getting into college.
01:00:46.525 --> 01:00:49.405
And so it took me about eight hours to do the.
01:00:49.675 --> 01:00:55.896
The English portion of the SATs and about three, three and a half hours to do the math portion.
01:00:56.376 --> 01:00:56.686
Yeah.
01:00:56.715 --> 01:00:58.016
Only because of the word problems.
01:00:58.215 --> 01:00:58.496
Right.
01:00:58.496 --> 01:00:58.766
Right.
01:00:58.815 --> 01:00:59.755
I could do the math.
01:00:59.826 --> 01:01:00.286
Okay.
01:01:00.286 --> 01:01:08.865
It was the word problems and being able to understand them enough to try to guess that what the word problem is trying to get to, but probably not very smart to do that.
01:01:08.867 --> 01:01:12.735
And so I got high enough scores in math.
01:01:13.065 --> 01:01:18.155
Then I got into North, I got into every one of those colleges except for.
01:01:18.545 --> 01:01:22.226
General Motors Institute, which is where I would have gone if I had gotten in.
01:01:22.235 --> 01:01:30.146
But I didn't even know at the time, because of the lack of internet, that, uh, GM Institute or at that time was free.
01:01:30.585 --> 01:01:43.766
So because it was free, everybody who came from a poor household, but had straight A's, you know, applied to that school to get into General Motors because, you know, it was free.
01:01:44.076 --> 01:01:47.835
Well, and circle me a little bit, is this like the, or I don't know what.
01:01:48.061 --> 01:01:49.280
Like late 60s or something?
01:01:49.811 --> 01:01:50.521
80s?
01:01:50.561 --> 01:01:51.820
I don't even know how old you are.
01:01:51.851 --> 01:01:54.731
Um, I, I went to college in 1980.
01:01:54.900 --> 01:01:56.081
1980, okay.
01:01:56.650 --> 01:02:05.510
Um, so 1980, so yeah, so the, it was still like the GM and Dodge and, and whatever had done some consolidation, the 70s weren't.
01:02:06.170 --> 01:02:10.650
Good to them necessarily, but the 1979 oil crisis, right?
01:02:11.210 --> 01:02:14.601
You're compounding their problems of having only big cars, right?
01:02:14.601 --> 01:02:25.786
Right after the 1973 oil crisis, you know, they came out with the Pinto and the Vega and I think some crappy cars, but You know, then they were hit again in 79.
01:02:25.916 --> 01:02:26.206
Right.
01:02:26.215 --> 01:02:29.476
And then you got the Reliant and the Aries and different things like that.
01:02:29.996 --> 01:02:31.266
Mostly you got four cylinder.
01:02:31.266 --> 01:02:41.166
The Toyotas and Hondas are really kicking their ass, both in size and fuel economy and reliability, all of a sudden things changed.
01:02:41.175 --> 01:02:41.976
And so.
01:02:42.255 --> 01:02:46.016
Yeah, it was a very in flux industry at the time.
01:02:46.385 --> 01:02:58.405
And so I, um, I graduated from Northeastern and went to an interview at Ford and, and I got the job at Ford and I asked them, okay, what am I going to do at this job?
01:02:58.425 --> 01:03:03.396
Cause I, there was actually the interview and then going back and, you know, um, and what did you get a degree in?
01:03:03.545 --> 01:03:04.045
What were you pursuing?
01:03:04.056 --> 01:03:05.795
Engineering and mechanical engineering.
01:03:05.795 --> 01:03:06.106
Sure.
01:03:06.516 --> 01:03:23.286
And so, um, when I went back to Ford for the pre job interview, the guy told me I was gonna basically be in charge of the little wire that looks like an S hook that's between the button of the door lock and the lock.
01:03:23.385 --> 01:03:23.786
Oh.
01:03:24.581 --> 01:03:25.731
And that was going to be my job.
01:03:25.731 --> 01:03:28.960
I said, I made those in high school out of coat hangers.
01:03:29.021 --> 01:03:29.440
Right.
01:03:29.451 --> 01:03:32.090
So I said, what am I going to do at week two?
01:03:32.570 --> 01:03:35.391
And the guy says, no, that's your job for a year.
01:03:36.360 --> 01:03:37.221
You're like, I quit.
01:03:37.420 --> 01:03:38.101
I can't do it.
01:03:38.101 --> 01:03:40.050
I said, I don't know if I could handle this.
01:03:40.451 --> 01:03:55.641
So I went back and I, and I was a co op student at a company called Draper Laboratories, which was part of MIT or a spin out of MIT, but I didn't quite uh, the whole affiliation with MIT at the time.
01:03:56.041 --> 01:04:09.670
So, um, I, but I had already joined the MIT racing team, which was racing cars, formula V racing cars, in sports car club of America races, and so I had already joined them the year before because I was from Michigan.
01:04:09.721 --> 01:04:14.900
walking right past the racing club as I went back and forth to work as a co op student.
01:04:15.561 --> 01:04:19.891
That's the main reason I picked Northeastern because I could have job experience.
01:04:19.911 --> 01:04:21.490
And where is Northeastern?
01:04:21.530 --> 01:04:23.110
It's right downtown Boston.
01:04:23.110 --> 01:04:23.490
Okay.
01:04:23.661 --> 01:04:24.021
Yep.
01:04:24.360 --> 01:04:26.581
Um, right near Symphony Hall.
01:04:26.681 --> 01:04:26.940
Okay.
01:04:27.001 --> 01:04:29.690
That's really a nice part of Boston.
01:04:30.451 --> 01:04:33.340
About two blocks from, uh, the Prudential Center.
01:04:33.610 --> 01:04:33.931
Yes.
01:04:33.931 --> 01:04:38.331
Yeah, you see the Big buildings, the Prudential's, one of the two big buildings.
01:04:38.420 --> 01:04:38.661
Gotcha.
01:04:38.840 --> 01:04:40.490
Uh, at least in Old Boston.
01:04:40.490 --> 01:04:45.920
Now there's a few more tall ones too, but back in those days there were only two skyscrapers.
01:04:46.041 --> 01:04:46.251
Gotcha.
01:04:46.251 --> 01:04:49.431
And the Prudential building and the, and the John Hancock building.
01:04:49.880 --> 01:04:55.190
And so I lived downtown and I was going back and forth to MIT Right.
01:04:55.190 --> 01:04:59.331
Through MIT's campus on the way to work as my co-op job.
01:04:59.420 --> 01:04:59.630
Yep.
01:04:59.690 --> 01:05:04.041
And so I just, I, you know, decided that if I stayed with Draper Laboratory.
01:05:04.670 --> 01:05:07.451
Cause they were offering me a job upon graduation.
01:05:07.951 --> 01:05:12.231
Um, they said, you know, uh, you know, come to work for us.
01:05:12.280 --> 01:05:15.490
And it was more interesting than the little wire between the door lock.
01:05:15.490 --> 01:05:16.900
I was doing robots.
01:05:16.931 --> 01:05:23.150
I was developing robots, which we way much higher tech than the door lock wire, not the door lock.
01:05:24.610 --> 01:05:28.070
Just the wire between the door lock and the door, and then lock.
01:05:28.070 --> 01:05:32.581
And so I, um, I decided to stay there because then I could work on that race car.
01:05:32.940 --> 01:05:36.420
And, and, you know, still get my automotive passion there.
01:05:36.420 --> 01:05:39.501
And still do some really cool robotics work.
01:05:39.960 --> 01:05:51.231
And, uh, when I sat down with the head of, um, uh, personnel, on my first day as an engineer at Draper Laboratories, he said, Oh, by the way, you can take classes at MIT.
01:05:51.231 --> 01:05:52.235
Oh.
01:05:52.856 --> 01:05:54.856
And I said, you've got to be kidding me, right?
01:05:55.286 --> 01:05:59.255
And he says, no, they're free, and, but they don't have any night classes.
01:05:59.326 --> 01:06:02.365
So you have to leave work and go to, go to class.
01:06:02.365 --> 01:06:03.416
How many could I take?
01:06:05.085 --> 01:06:06.695
You can only take one a semester.
01:06:07.215 --> 01:06:07.485
Okay.
01:06:07.945 --> 01:06:11.065
Because you're leaving work to go to class.
01:06:11.065 --> 01:06:15.996
But that's how supportive Draper Laboratories was for education.
01:06:16.235 --> 01:06:34.545
And, and so, Basically, I, you know, I went to work at Draper Laboratories and, you know, immediately took over the racing team from the PhD student who had been running it and wasn't putting enough time in and had, had to, you know, focus on his, getting his PhD.
01:06:34.865 --> 01:06:37.306
And so I took over running the racing team.
01:06:37.596 --> 01:06:39.045
So I was doing that job full time.
01:06:39.056 --> 01:06:40.606
Did you have a background in racing?
01:06:40.615 --> 01:06:44.146
Had you been racing some of these cars you were buying and selling and slicking?
01:06:44.146 --> 01:06:44.835
Not legally.
01:06:44.916 --> 01:06:45.385
Right, right.
01:06:45.387 --> 01:06:46.135
Right.
01:06:46.135 --> 01:06:46.885
Right.
01:06:47.115 --> 01:06:54.916
What was your favorite, by the way, we'll do a quick flashback, but your favorite fast car that you bought when you were a high school guy, uh, I had two.
01:06:55.266 --> 01:07:04.175
The fastest drag racing car was my, uh, Dodge Charger with a 383 Magnum and a four speed, a pistol grip shifter.
01:07:04.376 --> 01:07:09.956
And, but the shifting was like an entire arm length, you know, it's this giant lever.
01:07:09.956 --> 01:07:12.431
Hit the dash almost with it in the front.
01:07:12.871 --> 01:07:16.460
He went from the seat all the way to the dash to shift gears.
01:07:16.800 --> 01:07:21.570
Um, and that was a hilarious car because it never drove straight line.
01:07:22.090 --> 01:07:26.717
You'd just drag race it and it would just be sideways the whole way down the quarter mile.
01:07:26.717 --> 01:07:28.690
Sometimes it was sideways left, sometimes it was sideways right.
01:07:28.740 --> 01:07:30.621
Right, but it was never straight.
01:07:31.380 --> 01:07:37.181
You know, and you had to put the suicide knob on it because you couldn't keep up with how fast it was 30 turns locked in.
01:07:37.181 --> 01:07:40.340
It was just ridiculous.
01:07:40.440 --> 01:07:43.681
So if you couldn't turn that wheel fast enough, you lost it.
01:07:45.121 --> 01:07:46.960
And so that was my favorite drag car.
01:07:46.960 --> 01:07:50.451
And then I, I set up a Camaro as a road racer.
01:07:51.061 --> 01:07:57.365
And because Sudbury's roads were a very, well, Windy, and they were basically cow pasture.
01:07:57.405 --> 01:07:57.686
Nice.
01:07:57.775 --> 01:07:58.016
Right.
01:07:58.016 --> 01:08:02.226
So the, so the, the roads were created by the cows, not by the cars.
01:08:02.235 --> 01:08:02.706
Yep, yep.
01:08:02.786 --> 01:08:05.166
And, and then just paved over after a time.
01:08:05.186 --> 01:08:09.536
There's some roads out in Southwest Wisconsin that are kind of like that too, where it's just like crooked.
01:08:09.766 --> 01:08:12.931
And so I had been road racing, uh, and, and, Literally.
01:08:12.931 --> 01:08:14.161
Again, not legal road racing.
01:08:14.170 --> 01:08:14.951
Exactly.
01:08:15.920 --> 01:08:16.980
Very not legal.
01:08:17.600 --> 01:08:23.251
And, and, and I had a reputation in town that don't, don't race me on any road in Sudbury.
01:08:23.270 --> 01:08:23.631
Right.
01:08:23.631 --> 01:08:27.871
Because there was two kids that never made it home, you know.
01:08:28.266 --> 01:08:33.716
They lived, but they ran into something trying to keep up with Ed.
01:08:33.735 --> 01:08:34.395
Exactly.
01:08:35.725 --> 01:08:46.985
So, I sort of taught myself how to road race, and then once I got to MIT, I started road racing, you know, for real, with a real race car, and that was a lot of fun.
01:08:47.095 --> 01:08:50.845
Well, and that was kind of your first entrepreneurial venture, too, it sounds like.
01:08:50.855 --> 01:08:51.036
Well.
01:08:51.765 --> 01:08:53.456
But, do you mind if we take a quick break?
01:08:53.650 --> 01:08:53.930
Sure.
01:08:54.011 --> 01:08:55.131
And I want to come back to that.
01:08:55.451 --> 01:08:55.890
Okay.
01:09:40.037 --> 01:09:41.006
And we are back.
01:09:41.356 --> 01:09:41.827
Okay.
01:09:41.837 --> 01:09:43.117
And that was a really good bathroom break.
01:09:45.806 --> 01:09:49.867
So when we left off, you were managing the MIT racing team.
01:09:49.987 --> 01:09:50.277
Yep.
01:09:50.327 --> 01:09:52.537
And you're, and you're not even at MIT, right?
01:09:52.537 --> 01:09:53.476
Like you got one class.
01:09:53.487 --> 01:09:55.226
I got one class a semester.
01:09:55.226 --> 01:10:01.457
And so I'm taking classes and, and having a blast, uh, taking classes because I get to leave work.
01:10:01.777 --> 01:10:02.027
Right.
01:10:02.127 --> 01:10:02.827
You know, and then, you know.
01:10:02.827 --> 01:10:05.957
You know, come back to work and work on a robotics project.
01:10:06.346 --> 01:10:09.167
We managed to get that robotics project done.
01:10:09.396 --> 01:10:13.497
It had been delayed a year already, actually been delayed two years already.
01:10:13.867 --> 01:10:26.106
And we got an extra two more years and I got, I started managing the project cause the engineer that was on the project, um, you know, I, I sort of managed from.
01:10:26.527 --> 01:10:39.737
Like a junior position, but the engineer that was doing the software was technically the senior manager, but he was an introverted guy, you know, who loved clicking away at the keyboard and doing his software.
01:10:39.737 --> 01:10:49.487
So I took over as running the project and we took it from, you know, getting a two year extension to completing the whole project six months later.
01:10:49.587 --> 01:10:49.987
Oh, wow.
01:10:50.006 --> 01:10:53.117
And so nine months later, we were taking that robot.
01:10:53.492 --> 01:11:07.702
out to upstate New York to deliver it to another company that was going to take all of what we had researched and come up with for that and, and take it to the next level and commercialize it and build those robots for the sewing industry.
01:11:08.192 --> 01:11:15.242
It was actually a robot that could sew a pair of sweatpants every 17 seconds and with no hands.
01:11:15.931 --> 01:11:35.737
Literally, you take the, the, the cloth out of the, um, Die Cutter, and present it to the machine, it would unfold it, sew the seams, and open it up a long way, and fold it over, and align the other seam, and sew the other seam, and Oh, about as fast as you can watch it.
01:11:36.417 --> 01:11:42.877
Not quite, I mean, it's It, because it had six stations, each station had to work within 17 seconds.
01:11:42.886 --> 01:11:43.497
Oh, I see.
01:11:43.506 --> 01:11:52.317
So it wasn't quite blurry, but it was still fast as any robot had ever sewn any piece of clothing ever before.
01:11:52.367 --> 01:12:02.346
And so, um, the other guys on the, that group were working on a robot that would just sew a single suit sleeve and that's all it would do.
01:12:02.577 --> 01:12:04.777
And, and, and it had much.
01:12:05.021 --> 01:12:14.091
Much more expensive hardware, and it couldn't sew us just a suit sleeve in less than like two minutes.
01:12:14.462 --> 01:12:19.380
And so we definitely sort of, you know, kicked, uh, kicked butt on that project.
01:12:19.380 --> 01:12:22.992
Well, it starts to be like a good sewer could do the suit sleeve way faster than that.
01:12:23.082 --> 01:12:23.662
Oh, absolutely.
01:12:23.662 --> 01:12:28.221
But a good sewer probably couldn't do it in 17 seconds on the, or maybe about that, but.
01:12:28.322 --> 01:12:28.891
About that.
01:12:29.311 --> 01:12:37.242
We were going almost as fast as conventional sewing, but the key was they were having a hard time getting people.
01:12:37.601 --> 01:12:40.952
So, basically, the whole industry was leaving the U.
01:12:40.952 --> 01:12:41.202
S.
01:12:41.212 --> 01:12:42.171
to go to China.
01:12:42.261 --> 01:12:42.511
Right.
01:12:42.572 --> 01:12:49.381
And so the whole idea is that the cotton was all grown here, shipped to China, made into clothing, and shipped back.
01:12:50.146 --> 01:13:00.117
And so the whole idea was trying to, um, be able to keep the industry in this country because the cotton was here to begin with.
01:13:00.917 --> 01:13:05.127
And so automating it was the focus of that robotics group.
01:13:05.176 --> 01:13:05.497
Yeah.
01:13:05.497 --> 01:13:06.737
One would think almost that.
01:13:07.282 --> 01:13:09.391
Automation could have kept that here.
01:13:09.431 --> 01:13:11.502
Maybe it was just too far behind at the time.
01:13:11.841 --> 01:13:12.811
Cause we still do that, right?
01:13:12.811 --> 01:13:17.572
With, we raise a lot of cotton here and send it over there and they turn it into stuff and bring it back.
01:13:17.622 --> 01:13:18.341
Pretty much.
01:13:18.372 --> 01:13:28.902
Um, because again, it is still labor intensive and, and, but automating things like sewing is a very challenging concept.
01:13:28.921 --> 01:13:32.801
And so one of my, And there's all these different sizes and things, right?
01:13:33.136 --> 01:13:44.197
You know, one of my first patents was actually on a pneumatic robot that could align the cloth really quickly by doing it with air cylinders instead of with electronic robots.
01:13:44.686 --> 01:13:49.817
And so that was my first patent I filed on behalf of Draper Laboratories.
01:13:49.817 --> 01:13:50.117
Okay.
01:13:50.402 --> 01:14:01.391
as a pneumatic robot for basically, uh, doing very fast sewing, you know, alignment of the top to the bottom piece so that you could feed it to the sewing machine.
01:14:01.952 --> 01:14:09.942
That particular type of sewing machine trims about a 16th to an eighth of an inch off the edge of the material as it sews.
01:14:10.731 --> 01:14:15.877
So you'd have a looser, slight overlap where the air Could flow between or something is what you're trying to do.
01:14:15.886 --> 01:14:25.216
You can have an eighth of an inch error between the two pieces of cloth and still be accurate enough for the sewing machine to trim it and sew it at the same time.
01:14:25.707 --> 01:14:28.636
And so it was a really fun thing to do.
01:14:28.636 --> 01:14:36.067
And I had been doing it already as a co op student, but all of a sudden as a full time engineer, I took over the project.
01:14:36.617 --> 01:14:41.046
And I designed the whole last sixth stage of the, of the robot.
01:14:41.046 --> 01:14:54.601
Uh, And, and got it all the, you know, got the whole thing working and essentially supervising the supervisor as to what to do in software while I got everybody else to do all the mechanics of building the machine.
01:14:54.612 --> 01:15:00.612
Well, it seems like you've got some like Elon Musk esque kind of things like, I know what needs to be done.
01:15:00.622 --> 01:15:02.101
Just let me lead this team.
01:15:02.152 --> 01:15:05.152
And I'm going to make sure everybody gets their stuff done too.
01:15:05.242 --> 01:15:05.622
Right.
01:15:05.921 --> 01:15:06.931
Because it's not always easy.
01:15:06.962 --> 01:15:10.171
Like, especially for engineers, they tend to see the.
01:15:10.702 --> 01:15:12.112
Problem right in front of them.
01:15:12.112 --> 01:15:14.021
Not the bigger problem as easily.
01:15:14.252 --> 01:15:14.832
Correct.
01:15:15.412 --> 01:15:18.261
So your man on the streets helped you there.
01:15:18.282 --> 01:15:26.481
Yeah, while I was running the racing team, going to class, working full time, I was also designing my own racing car.
01:15:26.572 --> 01:15:26.992
Okay.
01:15:27.051 --> 01:15:32.351
So after four years of running the team, I Like on the side.
01:15:32.771 --> 01:15:35.721
Yeah, it was a secret skunk works project kind of.
01:15:36.462 --> 01:15:38.622
They knew you were working on stuff, but not quite what.
01:15:38.837 --> 01:15:40.697
No, it wasn't very secret.
01:15:40.726 --> 01:15:51.287
I actually got help from a CAD group and at MIT, where they designed, they gave me my own CAD program to be able to design the shape of the bodywork.
01:15:51.737 --> 01:15:58.867
And we, we went up to New Hampshire, we found the 3D printer in the United States.
01:15:58.877 --> 01:15:59.197
Okay.
01:15:59.506 --> 01:16:01.886
And we 3D printed race car bodies.
01:16:02.027 --> 01:16:02.306
Okay.
01:16:02.317 --> 01:16:03.817
Uh, from this CAD program.
01:16:04.016 --> 01:16:21.697
Program that I made the CAD students, the group that won, got the job of actually making an output from the shape of the design to the, the, what's called an STL file, which was brand new at the time to make a stereolithography model.
01:16:21.726 --> 01:16:23.016
And is this a plastic?
01:16:23.106 --> 01:16:24.176
Yeah, plastic.
01:16:24.176 --> 01:16:28.957
It was made with ultraviolet Lee cured plastic resin.
01:16:29.016 --> 01:16:39.591
And so I took that to the head of the, the, um, Wind tunnel laboratory, and I said here I want you to test these and he's like, what are these?
01:16:39.841 --> 01:16:41.091
I said they're race cars.
01:16:41.381 --> 01:16:42.372
He says no.
01:16:42.622 --> 01:16:44.082
What are these?
01:16:44.351 --> 01:16:46.702
I said, oh, they're 3d printouts.
01:16:46.761 --> 01:16:47.082
Right.
01:16:47.122 --> 01:16:48.782
And he had never seen one before.
01:16:49.537 --> 01:16:51.636
Because it was such new technology.
01:16:51.966 --> 01:16:58.117
And so I had learned about it at Draper Labs, and then I made my race car bodies out of it.
01:16:58.117 --> 01:16:58.729
Two different designs.
01:16:58.729 --> 01:17:03.247
And was that what the body, was that what your design was about, the aerodynamic stuff?
01:17:03.247 --> 01:17:08.421
Was it strapped on kind of a traditional chassis kind of element, or did that not matter?
01:17:08.572 --> 01:17:19.782
We had very strict rules in the class we were in, called Formula V, Formula V, and so those strict rules, you know, there were limitations of what we could and couldn't do.
01:17:20.131 --> 01:17:28.546
We couldn't use wings on the car, so I had to come up with ground effects and other ways of making downforce and things like that.
01:17:28.546 --> 01:17:32.393
And so, um, you know, I basically, you know, just studied Formula One.
01:17:32.393 --> 01:17:34.600
And everybody had the same power platform, basically, kind of thing?
01:17:34.600 --> 01:17:36.568
Exactly, the same Volkswagen power plant.
01:17:36.568 --> 01:17:37.051
Okay.
01:17:37.051 --> 01:17:49.712
And so, um, You know, so I took these two body designs to the wind tunnel and, um, and basically had the first 3D printed parts ever wind tunnel tested at MIT.
01:17:49.792 --> 01:17:50.582
Oh, interesting.
01:17:50.622 --> 01:17:53.412
And, and they just had a blast, you know, doing it for me.
01:17:53.412 --> 01:17:55.122
And so I had a lot of help.
01:17:55.301 --> 01:17:55.591
Yeah, yeah.
01:17:55.631 --> 01:18:03.046
You know, designing and, you know, building that race car because the whole team was like looking forward to this whole design of a new race car.
01:18:03.046 --> 01:18:03.997
So then, then did it compete?
01:18:04.186 --> 01:18:04.436
Yeah.
01:18:04.447 --> 01:18:05.497
Like, did you take this out on the circuit?
01:18:05.537 --> 01:18:06.926
I drove it for four years.
01:18:06.947 --> 01:18:07.306
Okay.
01:18:07.346 --> 01:18:08.907
In SCCA racing.
01:18:08.907 --> 01:18:09.407
And so.
01:18:09.606 --> 01:18:09.856
Okay.
01:18:09.856 --> 01:18:10.636
Had lots of fun.
01:18:10.636 --> 01:18:15.777
But I was also then, at that point, starting my own company at the very, at the same time.
01:18:15.777 --> 01:18:16.027
Okay.
01:18:16.027 --> 01:18:22.817
So I had, at that point, um, spun out of MIT with my plasma ignition technology.
01:18:22.817 --> 01:18:24.056
Oh, going way back to there.
01:18:24.221 --> 01:18:27.131
They're going back to the kind of the story we started with, right?
01:18:27.322 --> 01:18:29.891
Because I only worked for Draper Laboratories for three years.
01:18:29.931 --> 01:18:30.311
Okay.
01:18:30.332 --> 01:18:38.311
And then I started my own company on the idea that I had based on a PhD student that was there doing spark plug research.
01:18:38.421 --> 01:18:38.771
Okay.
01:18:38.811 --> 01:18:46.511
And whenever he got back with his movies developed, he would show the racing team because we were the only people in the building at nine o'clock at night.
01:18:46.912 --> 01:18:51.641
You know, and so he'd come back with these developed movies and go, you want to see some combustion movies?
01:18:52.112 --> 01:18:58.641
And so when I saw the combustion movie of this really special spark plug, I'm like, Oh, that's really cool.
01:18:58.641 --> 01:19:04.511
And, you know, and I basically kept asking him questions and, you know, he kept thinking I was bothering him.
01:19:04.511 --> 01:19:14.127
So he gave me the job, uh, cause he was German and he gave me the job of proofreading his, his PhD thesis, which was fantastic.
01:19:14.127 --> 01:19:15.657
400 pages.
01:19:15.716 --> 01:19:18.327
Okay, so here's the dyslexic kid.
01:19:18.447 --> 01:19:18.716
Oh God.
01:19:18.716 --> 01:19:23.546
Being handed 400 pages to periphery, going, okay.
01:19:23.631 --> 01:19:26.997
Uh, you know, so of course I read it very, very slowly.
01:19:27.087 --> 01:19:27.176
Yeah.
01:19:27.417 --> 01:19:27.867
Corrected.
01:19:27.867 --> 01:19:29.247
Is that still true for you today?
01:19:29.306 --> 01:19:29.697
Yes.
01:19:29.697 --> 01:19:31.077
I'm still slow at reading.
01:19:31.136 --> 01:19:31.407
Yeah.
01:19:31.527 --> 01:19:34.197
Um, fortunately there's audible these days, so.
01:19:34.287 --> 01:19:34.587
Right.
01:19:34.827 --> 01:19:36.087
I get to consume books.
01:19:36.087 --> 01:19:40.556
My eyes don't work like they used to, but truth, I don't need to read that much anyway.
01:19:40.561 --> 01:19:41.216
Exactly.
01:19:41.636 --> 01:19:42.447
So thanks.
01:19:42.692 --> 01:19:51.471
It's so audible, I can read it three times my normal speed, because you just turn it up to 3x and listen, and that I'm good at is listening.
01:19:51.752 --> 01:19:57.872
So anyway, I proofread his PhD thesis and came back and said, we have to do this different.
01:19:57.992 --> 01:19:59.381
He said, what are you talking about?
01:19:59.731 --> 01:20:01.171
I said, the circuitry is wrong.
01:20:01.787 --> 01:20:07.537
Because my dad's an electrical engineer, so he's learned enough about electronics from fixing cars.
01:20:07.886 --> 01:20:11.256
And my dad, you know, showing me how to rewire houses.
01:20:11.837 --> 01:20:15.186
Because my dad did all of his own maintenance in the house.
01:20:16.077 --> 01:20:19.966
And so I said, the circuitry's wrong for this spark plug.
01:20:20.016 --> 01:20:22.756
Because it'll only work at low speed and low load.
01:20:23.106 --> 01:20:34.527
And that once you get to high speed and high load, the, um, The spark plug will disintegrate because the circuitry will get more and more powerful as the power of the engine goes up.
01:20:34.926 --> 01:20:36.287
And he's like, I don't care.
01:20:36.367 --> 01:20:37.867
I'm just trying to leave here.
01:20:38.136 --> 01:20:41.356
I'm trying to get back to Germany, you know, and just try to get done.
01:20:41.596 --> 01:20:43.957
It's like, and he kept saying, I don't care.
01:20:44.266 --> 01:20:47.277
And I'm like, no, we really have to do this right.
01:20:47.596 --> 01:21:00.737
And so, um, so anyway, I, uh, I went to the strobe light laboratory at MIT and they, Jacques Cousteau wouldn't have made underwater movies if it weren't for Doc Edgerton making him strobe lights.
01:21:01.327 --> 01:21:06.506
That would work underwater because they couldn't figure out how to make a projector waterproof.
01:21:06.997 --> 01:21:12.226
So the projector would run the film and the thing that would make the frames was the strobe light.
01:21:12.896 --> 01:21:14.936
The strobe light timing was timed.
01:21:15.351 --> 01:21:18.952
To the, to the rate of the feed of the film.
01:21:19.442 --> 01:22:06.591
And so that's what made underwater movies back in the day, but they also made triggers for certain things, you know, other military, uh, applications, strobe lights, and including like, Camera flashes that where you could take a picture of a city at night with a big enough flash Oh that they would literally poof, you know, do a giant picture of a city in the middle of the night Interesting from the YouTube bomber and things like that, right, you know spy plane or whatever it was Yeah, so anyway, I went to the laboratory at MIT Of course and asked them how they made a strobe light and what made it work And basically I figured out the relationship between what they had figured out, how a strobe light works, and how that spark plug worked so well.
01:22:07.481 --> 01:22:19.212
And so I related the two, and then the technician that had worked for Doc Egerton for 40 years said, Yeah, this is how we made strobe lights back in the day, but you wouldn't make it that way anymore.
01:22:19.231 --> 01:22:22.992
Today, you wouldn't use a diode because we have them today.
01:22:23.002 --> 01:22:30.362
It was back in 1940s, they didn't have any diodes storing that excess power that's being created at higher load?
01:22:30.671 --> 01:22:30.921
No.
01:22:31.171 --> 01:22:33.822
Well, it's just how the current was delivered.
01:22:33.912 --> 01:22:34.261
Okay.
01:22:34.301 --> 01:22:39.612
And so you had to make voltage to jump the gap, and then you had to make current to make the bright spark.
01:22:39.622 --> 01:22:40.061
Right.
01:22:40.122 --> 01:22:42.752
To make a bright arc, to make a strobe light work.
01:22:42.761 --> 01:22:43.261
Right, right.
01:22:43.521 --> 01:22:49.212
And so, I figured out that Okay, the guy just sat there and gave me the answer.
01:22:49.902 --> 01:22:53.681
Today, you would make a strobe light circuit different than you did back then.
01:22:54.082 --> 01:23:08.731
So I basically said, okay, well, if I combine a strobe light circuit as you would do it today, in 1990, at the time, with the same, uh, uh, You know, better than how it was made in 1940.
01:23:08.731 --> 01:23:09.018
Right, right.
01:23:09.018 --> 01:23:17.881
When the strobe light was first invented, and the, the capacitive discharge ignition was also invented in the 1940s.
01:23:17.931 --> 01:23:18.301
Yeah.
01:23:18.372 --> 01:23:26.671
And literally the combination of those two patents, but done with a modern component called a diode, became patentable in 1990.
01:23:27.301 --> 01:23:30.921
Even though all I did is combine two 1940s inventions.
01:23:30.971 --> 01:23:33.362
Well, there isn't that many new things in the world.
01:23:33.372 --> 01:23:33.612
Yeah.
01:23:33.771 --> 01:23:36.542
Mixing them differently is mostly what makes progress.
01:23:36.591 --> 01:23:37.442
Exactly.
01:23:37.481 --> 01:23:46.641
And so that, I, I went to the MIT technology licensing office and told them I had this invention.
01:23:46.962 --> 01:23:49.252
And they said, well, you should just go patent it yourself.
01:23:49.252 --> 01:23:55.042
You invented it without any research money from MIT, without any support from MIT.
01:23:55.042 --> 01:24:12.162
And I said, no, I really need you to own it because At the time, the big news at the time was the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper, who basically had spent 30 years suing the automotive industry for inventing the intermittent windshield wiper.
01:24:12.162 --> 01:24:12.521
Right.
01:24:12.521 --> 01:24:14.112
I remember hearing about that story.
01:24:14.141 --> 01:24:15.283
And 20 years later.
01:24:15.283 --> 01:24:16.811
And he came out broke, right?
01:24:16.931 --> 01:24:17.442
Just about.
01:24:17.462 --> 01:24:25.171
He was broke for 20 plus years and then finally won his first case, you know, after 20 years of suing the industry.
01:24:25.181 --> 01:24:25.521
Right.
01:24:25.521 --> 01:24:25.596
Right.
01:24:25.657 --> 01:24:33.056
And unfortunately, his, his, and he, I don't know, it was a sad ending in the end.
01:24:33.356 --> 01:24:40.377
Cause when he finally got the money, you know, he was, I don't know how old at that point, he went crazy and he killed himself.
01:24:40.447 --> 01:24:40.947
Oh gosh.
01:24:40.957 --> 01:24:42.606
And so it's a sad story.
01:24:42.867 --> 01:24:46.497
So you, in the meantime, you're like, I want MIT's brand on the back of this.
01:24:46.527 --> 01:24:46.867
Not.
01:24:46.881 --> 01:24:47.561
Exactly.
01:24:48.271 --> 01:24:53.962
So what was even weirder is I go back to school, go back to work and running the racing team.
01:24:53.962 --> 01:25:01.902
So again, I have two full time jobs with the racing team and the, you know, and work and, and still taking a class a semester.
01:25:02.346 --> 01:25:07.777
And so I, um, I get a call about four months after filing the patent.
01:25:08.266 --> 01:25:16.516
And, and the guy from MIT's licensing office says, we have venture capital here in our office and they want to invest in your company.
01:25:16.947 --> 01:25:18.527
I said, I don't have a company.
01:25:18.936 --> 01:25:20.476
And, and he says something else.
01:25:20.476 --> 01:25:22.997
And I say, but I haven't graduated yet.
01:25:23.277 --> 01:25:27.417
And his answer to that was, do you want the money or not?
01:25:29.207 --> 01:25:36.296
I said, I'll be right over because, you know, the racing team and the technology licensing office were two blocks away from each other.
01:25:37.176 --> 01:26:01.782
So I'm like, I walked over there, met the venture capitalist, and then I started getting, you know, Negotiating to get spun out of MIT before even graduating because I would have needed another two, two and a half years to take enough classes to actually get my master's degree, because normally it's only a two year degree, but normally you're taking four classes a semester.
01:26:01.872 --> 01:26:07.421
I was only taking one class a semester, so I'm like, yeah, that's two and a half years away.
01:26:07.421 --> 01:26:10.971
I guess I'm, you know, so did you build a company out of that then?
01:26:11.402 --> 01:26:14.091
Yeah, I built a journal and research out of that.
01:26:14.252 --> 01:26:14.582
Okay.
01:26:14.601 --> 01:26:22.811
The name just came because we had, uh, a friend of mine and I had done one of the classes we took was an entrepreneurship class and you had to write a business plan.
01:26:23.252 --> 01:26:30.391
And so we wrote a business plan to make an America, American motorcycle company that was more like, you know, Suzuki.
01:26:30.391 --> 01:26:31.771
That kind of like the Buell thing.
01:26:32.896 --> 01:26:35.327
So I kind of like Buell, but not with a Harley engine.
01:26:37.256 --> 01:26:42.386
And, um, and, and we wrote that business plan for class and, and we got a pretty good grade.
01:26:42.396 --> 01:26:47.737
And, um, but we, we basically concluded we needed 30 million in venture capital.
01:26:48.157 --> 01:26:55.752
And here we were, I was 20 something and he was, You know, 20, 21 and I was 26 or something like that.
01:26:56.061 --> 01:26:59.061
And we're like, yeah, 30 million from venture capital.
01:26:59.341 --> 01:26:59.692
I'm not sure.
01:27:00.301 --> 01:27:00.502
Yeah.
01:27:00.502 --> 01:27:02.731
Well, I didn't, I didn't know at the time.
01:27:02.752 --> 01:27:03.471
Well, if I just.
01:27:03.872 --> 01:27:10.662
It was an MIT spinout that probably would have been doable, but I didn't think it was doable at the time because I didn't understand.
01:27:11.051 --> 01:27:15.192
Let's see if we could have a cool American motorcycle company if you got to that idea first.
01:27:15.742 --> 01:27:27.122
Well, if I had just had the, you know, stick to itiveness at that time to stick to it and then go ahead and, you know, and use the MIT connection to actually make an American motorcycle company.
01:27:27.181 --> 01:27:28.881
So this Adrenaline Research Project?
01:27:29.957 --> 01:27:30.506
Spins out.
01:27:30.527 --> 01:27:41.306
Spins out at MIT with the high energy ignition technology and with funding and we got to work and started, you know, trying to commercialize that technology.
01:27:41.306 --> 01:27:47.087
And that's like using the automotive industry to, to allow for like higher compression engines and stuff, correct?
01:27:48.067 --> 01:27:52.056
The way I kind of imagine it is the spark plug is actually pushing back against the pressure, too.
01:27:52.056 --> 01:27:56.266
So you have to, like, make it push through that pressure to get the boom.
01:27:57.277 --> 01:27:59.646
It's not a push as much as it's electrical.
01:27:59.716 --> 01:27:59.926
Right.
01:27:59.926 --> 01:28:04.327
But yes, it has to not It has to have a higher voltage so that it consistently can Right.
01:28:04.396 --> 01:28:05.747
separate that span.
01:28:06.016 --> 01:28:23.957
So the key was, what wasn't the spark plug idea that that had come from Bosch that had been run in the tests at MIT that I, you know, reviewed the PhD thesis for, basically validated that you could significantly improve low load combustion.
01:28:23.957 --> 01:28:30.617
So that mattered because this was the day and age when catalytic converters were very new.
01:28:30.817 --> 01:28:33.936
But the key was how do you get the catalytic converter working?
01:28:34.016 --> 01:28:45.716
Fired up, warmed up because, and so what our technology could do was cold start the car, uh, with a 70 percent reduction in cold start emissions.
01:28:46.396 --> 01:28:48.747
And so that's what the high energy was used for.
01:28:48.747 --> 01:28:53.801
But the key to the circuitry was that you turned off the circuitry.
01:28:54.891 --> 01:29:02.521
So that it did not do high energy at high speed and high load when you didn't need it because that would just disintegrate the spark plug.
01:29:02.601 --> 01:29:03.122
Right, right.
01:29:03.622 --> 01:29:08.452
And so that was the key to the invention as a circuit that could turn on and off.
01:29:08.492 --> 01:29:13.591
Took that innovation that your friend with the lazy PhD student had come up with.
01:29:14.072 --> 01:29:14.492
Yep.
01:29:14.591 --> 01:29:17.971
And uh, and really just bypass switched it for higher RPM.
01:29:18.162 --> 01:29:18.492
Right.
01:29:18.702 --> 01:29:23.841
And so it would work like normal and IRPM when normal spark is just fine.
01:29:23.872 --> 01:29:33.902
And it would work much, much better at cold start in idle when, you know, if you had one misfire, you could fail the entire emission test.
01:29:33.931 --> 01:29:34.391
Right.
01:29:34.551 --> 01:29:36.252
You know, just from a single misfire.
01:29:36.282 --> 01:29:36.622
Right.
01:29:36.622 --> 01:29:36.742
Right.
01:29:36.742 --> 01:29:39.082
And so that's what the technology was for.
01:29:39.082 --> 01:29:44.051
But I worked on that for 14 years and got very close to getting on the Bugatti.
01:29:44.051 --> 01:29:44.426
Right.
01:29:44.426 --> 01:29:50.917
And, uh, but we were 1, 000 more expensive, a car on a 2 million car.
01:29:51.296 --> 01:29:57.396
And they, even though we had knock detection, the other guys didn't, we had location of peak combustion.
01:29:57.737 --> 01:30:00.867
The other guys didn't all they had was misfire detection.
01:30:00.867 --> 01:30:05.237
And we showed them we could calibrate misfire detection in one day.
01:30:05.556 --> 01:30:06.606
The other system took.
01:30:07.617 --> 01:30:08.146
months.
01:30:08.537 --> 01:30:12.287
A normal misfire detection calibration took six months.
01:30:12.716 --> 01:30:21.327
The way it was done with what's called crankshaft speed fluctuation took six months to calibrate, you know, and we could calibrate in one day.
01:30:21.777 --> 01:30:31.181
And so basically, either the engineers were afraid of it or whatever, but They basically told us that 1, 000 more, a car and a Bugatti wasn't going to come.
01:30:31.181 --> 01:30:37.101
So you were for years on this with private equity funding and probably not as big of a salary as you wanted to.
01:30:37.112 --> 01:30:38.992
Mostly licensing funding.
01:30:39.261 --> 01:30:42.931
So I licensed the technology to companies that were going to produce it.
01:30:43.801 --> 01:30:51.641
Once I got off, you know, once I got the technology there, and then they, they were the funders.
01:30:51.662 --> 01:30:55.091
They were the funders and none of them got any revenues back out of it, basically.
01:30:55.091 --> 01:30:57.921
Because we couldn't get it across the line.
01:30:57.981 --> 01:31:01.431
I mean, we even had Motorola's automotive division.
01:31:01.917 --> 01:31:03.407
on our side at the end.
01:31:03.867 --> 01:31:24.096
And we then after sort of failing to get a low enough price for the Bugatti, right, which again, I didn't quite understand why price mattered, when the value like, you know, for the next two years, there was a story after story that they couldn't release the car, because it didn't have, well, no, 1001 horsepower.
01:31:24.577 --> 01:31:24.997
Oh.
01:31:25.006 --> 01:31:26.407
And that was the guarantee.
01:31:26.856 --> 01:31:33.596
And I'm like, I saw a thousand and one horsepower on the dyno when I was there because our system could do it.
01:31:33.766 --> 01:31:34.096
Right.
01:31:34.136 --> 01:31:36.197
Because our system had knock detection.
01:31:36.296 --> 01:31:36.627
Uh huh.
01:31:36.896 --> 01:31:49.247
But with that, when they used the other technology that didn't require, didn't have knock detection, they could not hit the thousand and one horsepower, which was what they had publicly proclaimed as their goal for the Bugatti.
01:31:49.247 --> 01:31:49.606
Interesting.
01:31:49.606 --> 01:31:49.936
Interesting.
01:31:50.087 --> 01:31:54.506
You know, because it was a W 16, which is a crazy compact engine.
01:31:54.506 --> 01:31:56.877
It's like two V 8s kind of straddling each other.
01:31:56.947 --> 01:31:57.377
Right.
01:31:57.646 --> 01:31:58.056
Yeah.
01:31:58.646 --> 01:32:00.997
Two W 8s, which was even weirder.
01:32:01.146 --> 01:32:01.627
Oh, right.
01:32:01.627 --> 01:32:05.457
They weren't, you know, they're, you know, they're just pistons everywhere.
01:32:05.487 --> 01:32:06.756
Oh, they're both W 8s?
01:32:06.987 --> 01:32:07.587
Two W 8s.
01:32:07.596 --> 01:32:11.912
Oh, I thought the 16 was Oh, gosh.
01:32:11.942 --> 01:32:12.221
Yeah.
01:32:12.221 --> 01:32:13.021
It was crazy.
01:32:14.042 --> 01:32:14.641
Anyway.
01:32:14.692 --> 01:32:22.032
Um, and again, we could have helped them cold started, you know, anyway, it didn't matter.
01:32:22.082 --> 01:32:23.492
So that was, how many years did you say?
01:32:23.532 --> 01:32:24.851
14 years.
01:32:24.851 --> 01:32:25.131
14 years.
01:32:25.131 --> 01:32:25.612
Wow.
01:32:25.641 --> 01:32:26.891
Developing that technology.
01:32:26.891 --> 01:32:37.622
And, and the thing that the straw that broke the camel's back, um, was the, the next year we got the opportunity to quote on the.
01:32:38.657 --> 01:32:40.877
Cause they had bought out Bentley and Rolls Royce.
01:32:41.697 --> 01:32:47.417
Um, and, and I'm trying to think what, there was a Volkswagen Phaeton that this engine was going to go on.
01:32:47.987 --> 01:32:52.497
So, um, we got to quote, uh, with Motorola's automotive division.
01:32:52.872 --> 01:33:03.811
We quoted on, uh, being on the Bentley and we had done another test since the Bugatti test to revalidate the 70 percent reduction in cold start emissions.
01:33:04.351 --> 01:33:10.942
And, and so we had done that and, you know, we had the misfire detection and we had the knock detection.
01:33:11.332 --> 01:33:14.311
I did the knock detection calibration in three days.
01:33:14.862 --> 01:33:20.641
And, and so here we are going in with a quote that's 40 more expensive.
01:33:20.931 --> 01:33:26.332
per Bentley for our technology versus the standard Bosch technology.
01:33:26.702 --> 01:33:29.042
Again, calibration takes three days.
01:33:29.072 --> 01:33:30.462
Bosch takes six months.
01:33:31.021 --> 01:33:34.282
The, uh, the, um, um, what else?
01:33:34.282 --> 01:33:35.631
Do you think it was emissions?
01:33:35.631 --> 01:33:38.572
Do you think it was just politics in some fashion that you didn't get it?
01:33:40.101 --> 01:33:41.322
As a Motorola didn't get it.
01:33:41.931 --> 01:33:44.112
Um, I, I have no idea.
01:33:44.112 --> 01:33:51.002
There, there was some, a little bit of rumor of politics that even allowed us to get the quote because.
01:33:51.546 --> 01:33:58.476
At that time, there was, it was the beginning of the war in Iraq, not Iraq, yeah, Iraq.
01:33:58.856 --> 01:34:04.386
And of course, everybody was being pressured to join George W.
01:34:04.587 --> 01:34:04.737
Right.
01:34:04.777 --> 01:34:06.726
The Coalition of the Willing, right?
01:34:06.726 --> 01:34:07.587
Right.
01:34:07.587 --> 01:34:09.497
And Germany wouldn't fall for it.
01:34:09.966 --> 01:34:19.676
And so they were pressuring saying, basically, if you don't meet our California emissions regulations to the letter, you won't be allowed to vote.
01:34:19.886 --> 01:34:22.377
to sell your ours in the United States.
01:34:23.146 --> 01:34:25.367
And so here they are going, Oh my God.
01:34:25.367 --> 01:34:26.716
So they're like scrambling.
01:34:27.096 --> 01:34:37.426
What can we use that's preferably American that, you know, can meet these emission standards that we can't actually meet because of these weird W engines.
01:34:38.006 --> 01:34:49.796
And, and, and basically we popped up and the research department said, we just did all these tests on the Bugatti, here's this technology and, you know, and so in the end.
01:34:50.221 --> 01:35:06.502
The war started without the German support, and so some of it could have been the 40 more expensive, but some of it could have been that we, they didn't actually have to join the war and they weren't actually going to be banned from selling cars in California.
01:35:06.572 --> 01:35:12.351
Cause basically 50 percent of all luxury cars at that time were sold in California.
01:35:12.421 --> 01:35:13.301
Oh really?
01:35:13.372 --> 01:35:13.872
Yeah.
01:35:14.101 --> 01:35:14.521
Oh, interesting.
01:35:14.532 --> 01:35:16.351
Like things like Bentleys and Rolls Royces.
01:35:16.351 --> 01:35:16.702
Right, right.
01:35:16.702 --> 01:35:17.792
The real luxury stuff.
01:35:17.851 --> 01:35:18.072
Yeah.
01:35:18.072 --> 01:35:18.322
Yeah.
01:35:18.341 --> 01:35:18.521
Super luxury.
01:35:19.676 --> 01:35:26.907
And so, but it's still, the fact that we got to demonstrate that we had way more value than 40 a car.
01:35:27.027 --> 01:35:27.476
Oh, for sure.
01:35:27.487 --> 01:35:30.046
Because they could have taken 40 out of the catalyst.
01:35:30.407 --> 01:35:35.692
They could have taken, the knock detection could have given them a higher horsepower number.
01:35:35.692 --> 01:35:37.167
Yeah, a smaller company party.
01:35:37.226 --> 01:35:37.697
Yeah.
01:35:39.027 --> 01:35:40.157
Once a year.
01:35:40.167 --> 01:35:40.886
Exactly.
01:35:40.886 --> 01:35:46.277
And so, it was, but that, you know, that really destroyed my sense that.
01:35:46.742 --> 01:35:49.152
I could ever, I could ever get across.
01:35:49.152 --> 01:35:50.282
I've got a stack deck here.
01:35:50.282 --> 01:35:50.731
Pretty much.
01:35:50.731 --> 01:35:52.282
I've got all the value proposition.
01:35:52.471 --> 01:35:52.832
Right.
01:35:52.841 --> 01:36:02.692
So was it just pack up the tent then or what became of the, I had fortunately done a deal four years earlier with Woodward who's here in Fort Collins.
01:36:03.356 --> 01:36:12.516
And, uh, and license them the technology and that deal, um, I've managed to negotiate a loophole in the contract.
01:36:12.537 --> 01:36:13.667
Got some kind of a revenue carry.
01:36:13.676 --> 01:36:24.856
Well, they were, they were funding us, but we were basically applying you with their funding and their license, not just revenue, but their license consulting contract.
01:36:25.317 --> 01:36:32.806
We were able to, you know, continue to develop the technology because when we licensed the Motorola.
01:36:32.806 --> 01:36:33.146
Yeah.
01:36:33.327 --> 01:36:36.027
It was our technology being licensed to Motorola.
01:36:36.027 --> 01:36:43.396
So, but we were able to utilize some Woodward resources as well as the Motorola resources to keep the advancing.
01:36:43.396 --> 01:36:47.226
Part of what they they're licensing you for is to make the technology better.
01:36:47.226 --> 01:36:51.747
So it'll be useful and apply for more patents for more IP protection.
01:36:51.777 --> 01:36:51.997
Right, right.
01:36:52.266 --> 01:36:59.936
So the loophole was that they had agreed to allow us to file patents and have the.
01:37:00.096 --> 01:37:05.396
The end date of the newest patent be the end date to the license.
01:37:06.087 --> 01:37:19.016
Oh, so they were looking at their, every, every year we, we applied for another patent was another year they were going to have to pay us royalties at the, at the 20 year mark, 20 year mark kept moving.
01:37:19.226 --> 01:37:19.646
Right.
01:37:19.827 --> 01:37:22.037
You're like, Oh, I'm getting close to my finish line.
01:37:22.046 --> 01:37:23.466
I better write another patent here.
01:37:23.537 --> 01:37:23.936
Right.
01:37:24.947 --> 01:37:26.266
And it was on their dollar.
01:37:26.516 --> 01:37:27.046
That I'm saying.
01:37:27.046 --> 01:37:27.337
Yeah.
01:37:27.587 --> 01:37:27.987
So.
01:37:28.372 --> 01:37:34.421
So, they saw the fact that they had not quite negotiated the licensing agreement very well.
01:37:34.942 --> 01:37:38.301
And, and so I went back to them and asked them to buy me out.
01:37:38.511 --> 01:37:38.731
Mm.
01:37:38.742 --> 01:37:42.992
And that would buy them out of this license agreement that was gonna go on forever.
01:37:43.032 --> 01:37:43.452
Right, right.
01:37:43.452 --> 01:37:44.782
If we kept working together.
01:37:44.801 --> 01:37:45.301
Right, right.
01:37:45.341 --> 01:37:47.481
And, and they agreed.
01:37:47.832 --> 01:37:50.511
And so, that's what got me here to Colorado.
01:37:51.442 --> 01:37:53.122
and got me sort of They got you.
01:37:53.122 --> 01:37:55.952
You got a little chunk of capital besides I got some capital.
01:37:55.952 --> 01:37:59.891
I got to be the head of the research department at Woodward, which didn't have a research department.
01:37:59.891 --> 01:38:00.532
Okay, cool.
01:38:00.542 --> 01:38:05.612
So that was a lot of fun because that's where I developed and invented and developed the super turbocharger.
01:38:06.032 --> 01:38:06.591
Right.
01:38:06.631 --> 01:38:17.787
And then, you know, so to me, it was like, You know, just doing fun projects and having what felt like an infinite budget compared to a startup.
01:38:17.896 --> 01:38:22.216
Right, well, they built like powertrains for ships and different things even, right?
01:38:22.216 --> 01:38:25.027
Fouls and controls and lots of different stuff.
01:38:25.037 --> 01:38:27.096
Might not be race cars, but it's pretty cool.
01:38:27.407 --> 01:38:28.502
And I was able to do that.
01:38:28.641 --> 01:38:36.902
to keep the license to Motorola and continue to support Motorola, trying to commercialize it in the automotive.
01:38:37.101 --> 01:38:44.612
And it would have been an extra payback to the stockholders of adrenaline, if that had actually happened.
01:38:44.631 --> 01:38:44.881
But.
01:38:45.087 --> 01:39:01.247
You know, very shortly after I sold out to Woodward Motorola sold their automotive division to a German company called Continental, which most people know of as a tire company, but they did do a lot more in Germany for electronics and other stuff.
01:39:01.247 --> 01:39:06.067
They had diversified a lot in Germany, but hadn't really moved to the U.
01:39:06.067 --> 01:39:06.327
S.
01:39:06.796 --> 01:39:08.947
And so they basically came to the U.
01:39:08.947 --> 01:39:09.146
S.
01:39:09.146 --> 01:39:12.527
and bought Motorola's automotive electronics division.
01:39:12.947 --> 01:39:18.356
And so once it became part of Continental, then became a whole nother political battle.
01:39:18.546 --> 01:39:24.447
Even though I was working for Woodward, trying to politically push Continental to continue with this technology.
01:39:24.497 --> 01:39:24.777
Right.
01:39:25.027 --> 01:39:26.457
Became an uphill battle.
01:39:26.457 --> 01:40:00.381
And is there other like work around patent technology that's in place now to do that better or just whoever was also competing with you at the time whatever it's just is what it is even to this day they don't have it would still be better if we use that it would still have better knock detection we also at the very end just before Motorola sold out to Um, uh, to Continental, we had figured out how to make it work within what's called inductive ignition instead of capacitive discharge ignition.
01:40:00.631 --> 01:40:09.591
So we basically brought another, like it basically would have eliminated that extra 40 that would have been the cost of it on the Bentley.
01:40:09.601 --> 01:40:12.622
It would have been literally for free and all the benefits.
01:40:13.002 --> 01:40:21.612
And so we had figured that out near the end and But then I couldn't get the managers at Continental to continue pushing the technology.
01:40:21.612 --> 01:40:25.002
Just a good story about how the best product doesn't always win.
01:40:25.011 --> 01:40:25.761
Yeah, definitely.
01:40:26.872 --> 01:40:42.192
Especially not in big industries where the consequences of losing a contractor so big, you know, could just been that supplier guy at whatever Bosch, Oh, by the way, Bosch, did you know that Bosch is the inventors of the world's first intermittent headlight switch?
01:40:44.601 --> 01:40:46.171
Headlight switches aren't supposed to be intermittent.
01:40:46.202 --> 01:40:46.551
Right.
01:40:47.612 --> 01:40:51.962
Anyway, that's an old, uh, BMW motorcycle joke right there.
01:40:52.282 --> 01:40:57.332
Um, I want to actually turn briefly to that super turbo.
01:40:57.612 --> 01:40:57.862
Okay.
01:40:57.872 --> 01:41:08.737
Uh, cause that's when I learned about you and I thought it was such a cool, uh, Can you, uh, sketch out the problem and the solution a little bit for, uh, non gearheads in the listening audience?
01:41:08.787 --> 01:41:09.417
Okay.
01:41:10.037 --> 01:41:12.367
That'll be hard to be a non gearhead answer.
01:41:12.886 --> 01:41:13.356
Anyway.
01:41:13.777 --> 01:41:15.037
I can translate a little bit, maybe.
01:41:15.037 --> 01:41:15.386
Okay.
01:41:15.716 --> 01:41:17.947
I'll rely on your translation.
01:41:18.356 --> 01:41:22.817
Uh, basically, it's a turbocharger attached to a transmission.
01:41:23.521 --> 01:41:28.832
And so a turbocharger normally just gets pushed by the exhaust.
01:41:29.362 --> 01:41:33.051
And the problem with a turbocharger is it has turbo lag.
01:41:33.502 --> 01:41:39.521
So everybody these days are trying to make them smaller and smaller to have less lag, but then you don't have the top end power.
01:41:39.521 --> 01:41:40.771
So you can't have both.
01:41:41.221 --> 01:41:48.106
And so you either need two turbochargers or as Volkswagen did at one point, they did one turbocharger and then they did the other.
01:41:48.176 --> 01:41:53.487
And a supercharger and the goal was downsizing the engine, right?
01:41:53.527 --> 01:41:55.877
Because a small engine is more efficient.
01:41:56.277 --> 01:42:03.426
And so having both a turbocharger and a supercharger allows the engine to be smaller, at least a gasoline engine primarily.
01:42:03.856 --> 01:42:14.032
And that small gasoline engine is more, much more efficient than a big gasoline engine, because it's using less fuel driving around town when you're at low speed, low load, right?
01:42:14.391 --> 01:42:14.412
Yeah.
01:42:14.412 --> 01:42:18.452
Like some of the, um, you still have to have the specs of the horsepower, right?
01:42:18.521 --> 01:42:22.141
Well, folks have, uh, that have driven like the Ford EcoBoost, right.
01:42:22.181 --> 01:42:22.601
You know, a 3.
01:42:22.601 --> 01:42:24.202
5 liter pickup truck.
01:42:24.202 --> 01:42:26.091
That's fast as golly.
01:42:26.162 --> 01:42:26.601
Yes.
01:42:26.631 --> 01:42:26.902
Right.
01:42:26.931 --> 01:42:28.591
Because it has two tiny little turbos.
01:42:28.631 --> 01:42:29.032
Right.
01:42:29.131 --> 01:42:31.231
And so, yeah, they get rid of the lag.
01:42:31.641 --> 01:42:37.242
So basically the super turbo got rid of the lag, but it also allowed another.
01:42:37.596 --> 01:42:42.787
technology, which is called turbo compounding, which is taking waste heat out of the exhaust.
01:42:42.787 --> 01:42:48.006
So normally a turbocharger, once it gets up to the boost level, that's acceptable.
01:42:48.006 --> 01:42:54.737
Or, you know, then you just take everything else, you take everything else and throw it out for the heat in the exhaust away.
01:42:54.806 --> 01:42:55.176
Yeah.
01:42:55.176 --> 01:43:32.351
Well, Uh, and what the super turbo could do is do turbo compounding because it would hold the speed of the turbine to whatever speed you were looking for and that would give you the boost level you wanted and all the extra heat would continue to push on the turbine and that extra push would give you free energy back to the crankshaft, sometimes between six and 10 percent depending on the type of engine, like a, gasoline engine could as much as 10 percent extra power that would come just from exhaust heat pushing on that turbine because you're never opening a waste gate.
01:43:32.851 --> 01:43:37.662
You're just holding the speed to the right boost and, and holding on.
01:43:38.032 --> 01:43:54.862
And literally the turbine is pushing through the transmission, pushing the engine, giving it 10 percent extra power on a, on a gasoline engine, 6 percent extra energy on a diesel engine and hooking that turbo to the transmission allowed you to power it like a supercharger.
01:43:54.862 --> 01:43:58.532
It was a dedicated transmission below the turbo.
01:43:58.792 --> 01:43:59.551
Oh, I see.
01:43:59.601 --> 01:44:00.051
Okay.
01:44:00.091 --> 01:44:05.421
And that's why it was called a super turbo because it could supercharge, could turbocharge.
01:44:05.476 --> 01:44:06.926
And it could turbo compound.
01:44:07.046 --> 01:44:07.497
Okay.
01:44:07.506 --> 01:44:10.377
So like, I think of a supercharger, like an old school.
01:44:10.697 --> 01:44:17.157
Camaros and whatever is driven off the crank, which this was too, just not positionally quite in the same way.
01:44:17.197 --> 01:44:17.556
Right.
01:44:17.667 --> 01:44:20.636
It had a, a continuously variable transmission.
01:44:20.657 --> 01:44:23.136
Right, that way you can keep it in the sweet spot.
01:44:23.237 --> 01:44:23.707
Right.
01:44:23.766 --> 01:44:25.587
Ah, that's where you're talking about that.
01:44:25.782 --> 01:44:27.492
That heat assist kind of element.
01:44:27.582 --> 01:44:27.931
Right.
01:44:28.002 --> 01:44:43.391
Well, you would first, I mean, the, the reason it had turbo lag was because it didn't have enough heat yet, so you could spool it up without heat by taking crankshaft energy up to the turbine, get the compressor going very, very quickly.
01:44:43.532 --> 01:44:49.277
You Get that instant boost you get from a supercharger and you get that from the transmission.
01:44:49.277 --> 01:44:53.346
Yes, you're stealing some off the crankshaft, but that's for seconds, you know?
01:44:53.346 --> 01:44:59.837
So yes, you have worse fuel economy for a couple of seconds, but then you have six to 10 percent better fuel economy.
01:45:00.101 --> 01:45:01.021
Cruising down the highway.
01:45:01.072 --> 01:45:01.721
Right, right.
01:45:01.752 --> 01:45:11.381
So, you know, the, the loss at the beginning compared to the gain over the steady state was way Well, you don't notice that lagginess of like the old school turbos, especially.
01:45:11.402 --> 01:45:11.752
Right.
01:45:11.792 --> 01:45:14.561
It'd have no lag and better fuel economy.
01:45:14.572 --> 01:45:28.756
Now is your tech, is that technology in use today in some of the industry or has it Unfortunately, I don't think so, but um, I left that company because they were heading in the wrong technical direction.
01:45:29.006 --> 01:45:31.556
And I disagreed with the technical direction.
01:45:31.556 --> 01:45:36.046
I showed them an alternative direction and they said, no, thank you.
01:45:36.287 --> 01:45:40.377
So I said, okay, I'm not going to support it.
01:45:40.377 --> 01:45:58.266
I can't help you raise money or help, you know, run this company that's, you know, heading to their, you know, The issue came down to the fact that I was the only one left at the company at that time that had been at Woodward at the time we were developing the first super turbo.
01:45:58.707 --> 01:46:04.447
And so the first super turbo we made was for a heavy duty truck engine and it was gear driven.
01:46:04.926 --> 01:46:08.457
And then we switched to a traction drive when we went to do a.
01:46:08.737 --> 01:46:10.256
Volkswagen super turbo.
01:46:10.726 --> 01:46:26.646
And then when we went back to truck super turbos, we stayed with the traction drive, figuring that was better, but the traction drive ended up being much too lossy to be able to get 6 percent efficiency gain on a diesel engine.
01:46:27.117 --> 01:46:31.596
And so that lossiness, um, it just was not going to be easy.
01:46:31.596 --> 01:46:35.016
The slack in the belts basically ate up all the efficiency gains.
01:46:35.037 --> 01:46:36.796
You know, the drive, the high speed.
01:46:37.027 --> 01:46:53.226
You know, 100, 000 rpm drive took up, took up four kilowatts and when you only had six kilowatts available excess, that 6 percent efficiency gain theoretical became a 2 percent theoretical, which is not enough.
01:46:53.247 --> 01:46:59.266
And I knew from being in the automotive industry for 14 years, Close enough is never close enough.
01:46:59.487 --> 01:47:04.157
Yeah, and twice the price for 2 percent is not going to cut it.
01:47:04.216 --> 01:47:04.567
Yeah, yeah.
01:47:04.577 --> 01:47:06.846
You have to be Because there's a lot of complexity, right?
01:47:06.846 --> 01:47:10.466
Like, there's a lot of That transmission device sounds not simple.
01:47:10.466 --> 01:47:13.587
A lot of engineering hardware and software around that, probably.
01:47:13.686 --> 01:47:18.332
And boy, we got a whole bunch of grief just for having a different fluid.
01:47:18.902 --> 01:47:20.612
It wasn't running on engine oil.
01:47:20.622 --> 01:47:22.252
It was running on traction fluid.
01:47:22.521 --> 01:47:23.551
Oh my God.
01:47:23.572 --> 01:47:25.631
You're going to put another fluid on board a truck.
01:47:26.072 --> 01:47:26.942
Oh my God.
01:47:26.962 --> 01:47:27.822
That's terrible.
01:47:28.221 --> 01:47:37.702
You know, that's, that's difficult, you know, and, and, and the price tag, you know, 3, 000, the original one on the heavy truck that was engine oil lubricated.
01:47:38.537 --> 01:47:39.417
Or that was traction fluid.
01:47:39.436 --> 01:47:40.117
Yeah, right.
01:47:40.117 --> 01:47:41.926
The gear driven one is engine oil lubricated.
01:47:41.957 --> 01:47:42.487
Right, right.
01:47:42.506 --> 01:47:44.747
So it didn't need, it didn't need traction fluid.
01:47:44.747 --> 01:47:45.327
No special juice.
01:47:45.327 --> 01:47:47.697
I mean, that is a significant Obstacle.
01:47:48.216 --> 01:47:49.516
Believe me, it was an obstacle.
01:47:50.306 --> 01:47:57.567
And, uh, and so when I suggested we go back to gears and go back to engine oil, the answer was no.
01:47:57.567 --> 01:47:58.676
I said, okay, good luck.
01:47:58.716 --> 01:47:59.466
We're invested.
01:47:59.577 --> 01:47:59.907
Yeah.
01:47:59.976 --> 01:48:02.546
And so that's when it wandered out to California.
01:48:02.726 --> 01:48:05.346
And that's when I started the solar company.
01:48:05.606 --> 01:48:05.987
Yeah.
01:48:06.006 --> 01:48:12.141
Then when that failed to get any traction, Um, because everyone was going bankrupt in the solar industry.
01:48:12.152 --> 01:48:12.662
Right, right.
01:48:12.662 --> 01:48:14.101
Then, then I left for California.
01:48:14.152 --> 01:48:14.811
Oh, okay.
01:48:14.841 --> 01:48:15.141
Okay.
01:48:15.332 --> 01:48:17.322
After doing two stints at Burning Man.
01:48:17.591 --> 01:48:19.452
Cause it's so Ha ha ha ha.
01:48:19.452 --> 01:48:21.402
Well, maybe you do want to smoke this joint.
01:48:21.402 --> 01:48:23.212
I always have one ready for us here.
01:48:23.212 --> 01:48:24.488
Ha ha ha, okay.
01:48:24.488 --> 01:48:27.527
Um, we passed 420 without me mentioning it cause serious.
01:48:27.806 --> 01:48:30.747
But, uh, if you've been to Burning Man, you've smoked it before.
01:48:31.837 --> 01:48:32.966
Actually can't smoke.
01:48:33.296 --> 01:48:35.596
You're trying to get a gummies.
01:48:35.596 --> 01:48:36.016
They're okay.
01:48:36.027 --> 01:48:36.667
Oh yeah.
01:48:36.716 --> 01:48:37.997
I'll bring some lungs.
01:48:37.997 --> 01:48:39.737
Don't handle any smoke at all.
01:48:40.056 --> 01:48:40.697
Unfortunately.
01:48:40.806 --> 01:48:48.697
So, so you have kind of probably this, uh, Midlife ish crisis almost in separating from the van dyne super turbo.
01:48:48.697 --> 01:48:58.096
I'm Launched into the solar company, but it was probably a mid a bit of a crisis once that failed, right?
01:48:58.127 --> 01:49:06.296
And I wasn't even able to raise, you know capital for that after raising 40 million dollars for van dyne super turbo not being able to raise Right.
01:49:06.296 --> 01:49:24.896
Any money for, for wave solar just became so like, okay, what was the innovation around around wave solar was it was a steam engine that would run on solar thermal panels, but then the, all of the waste heat from the steam engine would get utilized for heating, heating, cooling.
01:49:25.356 --> 01:49:26.287
It had a heat pump.
01:49:26.466 --> 01:49:28.556
Uh, attachment, so it would heat and cool.
01:49:28.556 --> 01:49:30.837
And natural gas too, I think I read, right?
01:49:30.856 --> 01:49:32.747
Like as an emergency source.
01:49:32.756 --> 01:49:33.587
Yeah, as a backup.
01:49:33.747 --> 01:49:34.966
Right, well that's a big deal though.
01:49:34.966 --> 01:49:37.856
I mean, especially, you know, I'm from North Dakota, like I said, so.
01:49:38.766 --> 01:49:43.127
Yes, the heat pump sounds really good, but I better not die if it breaks.
01:49:43.216 --> 01:49:43.806
Exactly.
01:49:44.587 --> 01:49:48.487
Yes, it was solar thermal with natural gas backup.
01:49:49.067 --> 01:49:57.966
And it actually, that's when my first introduction to ammonia was we did an ammonia chiller, and we built our own at CSU's powerhouse.
01:49:58.447 --> 01:50:14.136
And, um, it was funny because the professor looking over our shoulder, um, had done a Uh, chiller technology for his PhD thesis, but he basically said, you'll never get it working because for five years, he built a chiller and never got it working.
01:50:14.497 --> 01:50:20.667
And with under six undergrads in nine months, we got a chiller working in the lab downstairs.
01:50:20.987 --> 01:50:25.601
And he was like, You know, like, not devastated, but what's the right word?
01:50:25.851 --> 01:50:29.662
He was, you know, like, you know, put under a little bit.
01:50:29.862 --> 01:50:30.721
Right, right.
01:50:30.952 --> 01:50:36.481
These six undergrads could build a chiller after he spent five years trying to build one for a PhD.
01:50:36.481 --> 01:50:36.931
Yeah.
01:50:37.072 --> 01:50:48.822
The fact that he still was a PhD, you know, was sort of like, Come on, guys, you know, be a bit more encouraging, be a bit more enthusiastic that we did something you failed to do in five years.
01:50:48.862 --> 01:50:52.631
Well, and, you know, sometimes it's just the right next set of eyes.
01:50:52.981 --> 01:50:58.891
You know, it isn't often just one person's brain that comes up with all the obstacle clearing.
01:50:58.891 --> 01:51:00.332
It's, you know, inviting.
01:51:00.362 --> 01:51:15.966
And that's one of the things I think I'm hearing in your story is that you've invited input and collaboration and connection and, and just done things kind of out in the wide, wide open comparably in each space to invite those other good ideas into the sauce.
01:51:16.016 --> 01:51:16.806
Absolutely.
01:51:17.216 --> 01:51:20.787
And we have 11 volunteers with a plastic degree.
01:51:20.787 --> 01:51:21.546
Oh, is that right?
01:51:21.546 --> 01:51:21.837
Yeah.
01:51:21.837 --> 01:51:24.216
And everybody's working for stock options.
01:51:24.256 --> 01:51:24.546
Right.
01:51:24.556 --> 01:51:31.322
Everybody's you know, working hard and helping us raise the money so that people can start to get paid.
01:51:31.322 --> 01:51:35.761
And, you know, but everybody is enthusiastic about the plastic cleanup.
01:51:36.131 --> 01:51:45.061
Everybody's enthusiastic because we do have the potential to make the lowest cost ammonia in the world and then make it from a waste product.
01:51:45.381 --> 01:51:50.521
And therefore it, you know, the whole, the, the economics are there, right?
01:51:50.591 --> 01:51:52.966
Uh, clean the earth, you know, right.
01:51:53.537 --> 01:52:08.287
Well, what I love about this, not to cut you off there, Ed, but like the, the whole kind of climate conversation spins around putting less carbon into the atmosphere, um, which is great unless you want to feed more people.
01:52:08.287 --> 01:52:13.527
Like there's a challenge there, you plants eat that stuff, but, but also more significantly to me is.
01:52:14.447 --> 01:52:16.306
Energy is, is money.
01:52:16.877 --> 01:52:20.346
Like you can't just print energy like you can just print money these days.
01:52:20.356 --> 01:52:23.447
So energy is more like money than money is like money.
01:52:23.487 --> 01:52:23.827
Right.
01:52:24.136 --> 01:52:26.247
Right, and that's the ability to do work.
01:52:26.247 --> 01:52:30.077
It's the ability to build buildings and get things done and to prosper.
01:52:30.216 --> 01:52:30.567
Right.
01:52:30.646 --> 01:52:37.546
You know, the thing, and so, if we can have good, stable energy with, uh, out carbon.
01:52:37.777 --> 01:52:38.577
I'm all for it.
01:52:38.606 --> 01:52:47.186
You know, that's the most exciting thing I've heard about this is, is that like, I want to have a clean earth and not starving people, right?
01:52:47.306 --> 01:52:49.527
I want both of those things are dead people.
01:52:50.317 --> 01:52:51.877
You know, exactly.
01:52:52.317 --> 01:53:04.181
Not dead people from hurricanes and well, yeah, hurricanes and freezing to death, sweltering to death, all those things that that energy allows us to protect people from the weather in a lot of respects.
01:53:04.572 --> 01:53:10.011
And, you know, there's definitely some Malthusianism in existing climate.
01:53:10.591 --> 01:53:11.192
Malthusia?
01:53:11.231 --> 01:53:11.511
Yeah.
01:53:11.662 --> 01:53:11.971
Right?
01:53:12.412 --> 01:53:12.851
Malthus.
01:53:12.851 --> 01:53:13.122
Yeah.
01:53:13.122 --> 01:53:13.402
Yeah.
01:53:13.402 --> 01:53:19.391
That says, ya know we could just get down to a billion people Like, it would be have a lot better Earth, right?
01:53:19.442 --> 01:53:22.702
That was an old climate scientist from the 60's, or something like that.
01:53:22.712 --> 01:53:22.731
Wow.
01:53:22.742 --> 01:53:24.402
That's definitely Right.
01:53:24.402 --> 01:53:28.442
Well, which takes seven billion people through one of the fix, right?
01:53:28.612 --> 01:53:29.122
Exactly.
01:53:29.162 --> 01:53:30.641
That sets up a worse situation.
01:53:31.212 --> 01:53:32.881
Kind of a conversation than we have now.
01:53:32.952 --> 01:53:33.582
Exactly.
01:53:33.591 --> 01:53:38.652
So anyway, why don't you just kind of deviate into the significance of this, I suppose.
01:53:38.862 --> 01:53:46.862
And with our technology, we can flip the switch and go back and forth between running on methane and running on plastic.
01:53:46.962 --> 01:53:47.492
Oh, really?
01:53:47.582 --> 01:53:52.481
So we're even better off so that, you know, because there's never gonna be not, not methane.
01:53:52.601 --> 01:53:52.992
Right.
01:53:53.061 --> 01:53:57.391
But we can still utilize that methane with zero carbon emission.
01:53:57.452 --> 01:53:57.742
Huh.
01:53:57.742 --> 01:54:11.511
You And so make those carbon nanotubes and our, our technology being so low energy, um, to make that green ammonia, we can make it with one quarter of the solar panels.
01:54:11.641 --> 01:54:13.761
So we need one quarter.
01:54:13.801 --> 01:54:14.072
The energy.
01:54:14.731 --> 01:54:24.902
You know, the amount of energy to make that green ammonia as you would take to make green ammonia from splitting water and then making ammonia out of splitting water.
01:54:24.907 --> 01:54:25.106
Right?
01:54:25.106 --> 01:54:25.306
Right.
01:54:25.412 --> 01:54:36.542
And so the fact that we have one quarter the other, like the solar field we need to run our plant right, is one quarter that of the competition making the their.
01:54:37.282 --> 01:54:38.631
version of Green Ammonia.
01:54:38.641 --> 01:54:40.322
I'm happy to sell it for their price.
01:54:40.322 --> 01:54:40.692
Right, right.
01:54:41.731 --> 01:54:46.141
Because now I can basically make 3X what it cost me to manufacture.
01:54:46.152 --> 01:54:47.702
So what do you need to get your billion?
01:54:48.692 --> 01:54:54.902
How much capital do you need to raise to get to the place where you could qualify for that billion dollar loan deal?
01:54:54.931 --> 01:54:57.082
We need 50 to 60 million.
01:54:57.131 --> 01:54:57.502
Okay.
01:54:57.652 --> 01:55:08.931
And then we'll qualify for the Billion and some of it's going to come in the form of loans because we can get a low interest loan here in Colorado for All of our solar panels for a pilot plant, right?
01:55:08.981 --> 01:55:13.712
And there's other building loans and other other aspects of Incentives.
01:55:13.712 --> 01:55:29.082
We're also going after grants from the government grants from private industry or big, you know Well, I would think, like, some of the existing oil producing companies would want a piece of this pie, but maybe they see it as a threat more than an opportunity.
01:55:29.082 --> 01:55:30.912
At the moment, they see it as a threat.
01:55:30.912 --> 01:55:35.471
We have approached one oil company, and so far, you know, crickets.
01:55:35.622 --> 01:55:36.171
Yeah, yeah.
01:55:36.747 --> 01:55:43.226
Right now we're going to have to prove it to them and we've approached two other companies and they want us to prove it to them.
01:55:43.237 --> 01:55:47.606
So maybe when we have our pilot plant running, we'll get their investment.
01:55:47.617 --> 01:55:50.157
But right now, you know, they don't believe us.
01:55:50.636 --> 01:56:01.412
Um, we've had one, um, Japanese company willing to invest in our next round, but they want to see proof that the carbon is of high enough quality to sell it.
01:56:01.712 --> 01:56:07.652
They basically said, yeah, we believe you on the ammonia, but we don't believe you can make the carbon black.
01:56:07.671 --> 01:56:09.862
You mean you can make quality enough carbon.
01:56:10.181 --> 01:56:12.212
to be able to sell it in the market.
01:56:12.231 --> 01:56:16.341
And we think that's a piece of cake, but you know, obviously it has to be proven.
01:56:16.341 --> 01:56:18.702
So we have to go build the mobile lab.
01:56:18.712 --> 01:56:20.822
We'll prove that in the next six months.
01:56:21.221 --> 01:56:24.141
So we'll be able to prove it, but it's kind of funny.
01:56:24.162 --> 01:56:28.681
The people that, you know, sort of believe one aspect of what we're doing, don't believe the other.
01:56:29.181 --> 01:56:38.671
But, you know, technically, we could throw all that carbon black and put it in the soil as fertilizer, because that's what's being depleted by all the nitrogen fertilizer.
01:56:39.112 --> 01:56:45.082
Is, uh, farms in this country are, the soil is now carbon depleted.
01:56:45.091 --> 01:56:45.481
Right.
01:56:45.622 --> 01:56:46.942
Yeah, the organic matter.
01:56:46.952 --> 01:56:54.721
The organic matter's gone, because the nitrogen helps the plants take up the Oh, the plants grow so amazingly that they just suck up all that organic matter.
01:56:54.742 --> 01:56:55.301
Yes.
01:56:55.926 --> 01:57:11.466
And so we could literally throw it on the fields and give it away for free and still be successful as a company because, you know, just for the first 10 years, the green hydrogen tax credit pays for a hundred percent of our costs, a hundred percent.
01:57:12.157 --> 01:57:18.817
And do you have somebody that does all this paperwork to do all the green energy tax credit things in the Colorado?
01:57:18.837 --> 01:57:19.527
I do now.
01:57:19.527 --> 01:57:24.567
I just, we just got our volunteer, uh, chief financial officer.
01:57:24.877 --> 01:57:30.466
So he's now working on all the different proof points financially that are gonna validate.
01:57:30.646 --> 01:57:44.556
Yeah, we can really do this and I've got a really good engineering team that have dug in and looked at all the research papers on, you know, how, how plasma, you know, chemically works to disintegrate molecules.
01:57:44.556 --> 01:57:44.846
Yeah.
01:57:46.351 --> 01:57:46.921
Excuse me.
01:57:47.322 --> 01:57:50.141
And it's, you know, they validate it.
01:57:50.192 --> 01:57:50.471
Yep.
01:57:50.492 --> 01:57:53.112
This paper here proves that that's going to work.
01:57:53.112 --> 01:57:55.192
This paper here is going to prove that's going to work.
01:57:55.391 --> 01:58:02.662
You're pretty confident, like you're pretty sure that this thing will work if we can spin it up and get it rocking.
01:58:02.712 --> 01:58:08.521
I mean, I just told an investor the other day, it's 110 percent chance we're going to get the whole system working.
01:58:08.862 --> 01:58:12.292
And it's a 200 percent chance we're going to get the ammonia piece working.
01:58:12.822 --> 01:58:14.231
I mean, the ammonia piece is.
01:58:14.631 --> 01:58:16.851
You know, literally off the shelf everything.
01:58:16.891 --> 01:58:18.921
Yeah, we just have to put the pieces together.
01:58:19.282 --> 01:58:30.192
So, okay, you know again having this Japanese company Tell me oh, you're not gonna make good enough quality carbon and I'm like, okay Oh, I guess I have to test that was the thing.
01:58:30.192 --> 01:58:48.282
I'm scared, you know Knowing what I know about plasma and how I you know, basically Back in the day could tune a Ferrari Formula one engine in two seconds Because they, they were sending engines to the racetrack and Michael Schumacher got the 800 horsepower engine.
01:58:48.582 --> 01:58:54.502
The other driver got the 750 horsepower engine, but the engineers at Ferrari couldn't figure out what the difference was.
01:58:55.582 --> 01:58:58.612
And I put my system on their engine and we did a dyno test.
01:58:58.612 --> 01:59:02.591
We went from 10, 000 to 18, 000 RPM in two seconds.
01:59:02.891 --> 01:59:05.381
I looked at the data and said, there's your bad cylinder.
01:59:06.221 --> 01:59:09.896
And they were like, Okay, how much is your system?
01:59:09.896 --> 01:59:11.417
I said 30, 000.
01:59:11.856 --> 01:59:15.617
They were like, yeah, that just saved us like 10 million.
01:59:16.506 --> 01:59:17.037
Interesting.
01:59:17.176 --> 01:59:27.197
They had been doing testing for years, not knowing what was wrong, what was the difference between the 750 horsepower engine and the 800 horsepower engine.
01:59:27.527 --> 01:59:30.716
And when you say a bad cylinder, you mean like a manufacturing flaw or something?
01:59:30.726 --> 01:59:31.431
No, it was just a bad cylinder.
01:59:31.962 --> 01:59:32.992
I use design.
01:59:33.061 --> 01:59:55.902
No, it was like a bad spark plug or a bad injector because even though they, they measured everything perfectly, you know, like every piece of that engine was within one 10, 000th of an inch of every other piston in the engine, every other Ring every, every, everything was mechanically within, you know, less than a 10, 000th of an inch difference between part to part.
01:59:56.332 --> 02:00:00.152
And yet they couldn't figure out what, where 50 horsepower went.
02:00:00.502 --> 02:00:10.622
And it was not the injector as like, as they could test an injector on a test bench and it would pulsate and it would put out the right amount of fuel.
02:00:10.992 --> 02:00:16.851
But once it got in the engine and the engine started shaking, the engine would cause the spring loading in that.
02:00:17.162 --> 02:00:41.311
Uh, in that injector to sort of like go into harmonic vibration and that literally bad spring within an injector would stop putting out the right amount of fuel and it would lean out or 5 percent less fuel than it should be for 10 percent more fuel and basically flood the cylinder and that would cause that cylinder to run weak and I could see that in the data through the spark plug.
02:00:42.492 --> 02:00:49.742
And, and, you know, so like they bought a system and so did McLaren and, you know, it was So you had a little revenues here and there.
02:00:49.742 --> 02:00:58.893
Yeah, but I mean, 14 years of research and development, you know, selling 30, 000 ignition systems to Formula One that didn't go very far.
02:00:58.893 --> 02:01:00.192
We eat that up every two weeks.
02:01:00.652 --> 02:01:18.445
It was the licensees like Woodward that really kept the company alive and, you know, Motorola's automotive division was really good to work with once we got the ball rolling until we sort of slammed into the wall of, you know, it's not German, so why should we buy it?
02:01:18.445 --> 02:01:18.751
Yeah.
02:01:18.751 --> 02:01:19.055
Interesting.
02:01:19.055 --> 02:01:25.145
Um, I want to move into our, is there other big, uh, elements of your journey that we've passed over?
02:01:25.145 --> 02:01:27.511
I mean, we've been all over the place.
02:01:27.521 --> 02:01:29.311
We're already over time, but it's cool.
02:01:29.782 --> 02:01:32.112
I, what, what would you like to cover?
02:01:32.231 --> 02:01:37.992
Uh, I think we're going to jump into our, uh, our closing segments, the Faith Family Politics.
02:01:38.042 --> 02:01:38.652
Okay.
02:01:38.681 --> 02:01:40.851
We always talk about Faith Family Politics.
02:01:41.032 --> 02:01:42.521
Faith Family Politics.
02:01:42.542 --> 02:01:45.162
And it's just as much or as little as you prefer.
02:01:45.511 --> 02:01:47.801
Um, I know, is it Diane?
02:01:47.811 --> 02:01:48.612
What's your wife's name?
02:01:48.981 --> 02:01:49.752
I don't have a wife.
02:01:49.761 --> 02:01:50.981
You don't have one anymore.
02:01:50.992 --> 02:01:51.372
Okay.
02:01:51.431 --> 02:01:53.971
I have a wonderful girlfriend named Tiffany.
02:01:54.171 --> 02:01:54.551
All right.
02:01:54.561 --> 02:01:56.851
And we You were married when I heard about the Van Dyne Super Turbo.
02:01:57.061 --> 02:01:57.631
Yes, I was.
02:01:57.631 --> 02:01:58.091
That's why I asked.
02:01:58.631 --> 02:02:08.042
And, um, I have a very, I won't tell the whole story, but I have the dubious distinction to be married twice and divorced three times.
02:02:08.301 --> 02:02:08.412
Oh.
02:02:10.801 --> 02:02:12.221
That's a story for another day.
02:02:12.742 --> 02:02:13.231
Fair enough.
02:02:13.242 --> 02:02:15.252
So you'll have to invite me back for that one.
02:02:15.582 --> 02:02:21.561
Anyway, um, uh, Uh, Tiffany's a wonderful lady and we've been going out for two and a half years.
02:02:21.561 --> 02:02:21.921
Okay.
02:02:21.992 --> 02:02:23.902
And so on the faith side.
02:02:24.072 --> 02:02:25.532
Do you have any kids or anything like that?
02:02:25.532 --> 02:02:27.462
I have two kids from my first marriage.
02:02:27.532 --> 02:02:27.912
Alright.
02:02:28.021 --> 02:02:31.641
Uh, my daughter's 32 and my son is 29.
02:02:32.032 --> 02:02:33.021
They're wonderful kids.
02:02:33.061 --> 02:02:36.452
We, uh, we do a one word description here of the children.
02:02:36.492 --> 02:02:37.231
One word.
02:02:40.021 --> 02:02:46.702
My son is, uh, just very, uh, one word, boy that's impossible.
02:02:46.712 --> 02:02:49.082
Sometimes I love hyphens.
02:02:49.101 --> 02:02:56.532
He's, uh, he's the detail guy.
02:02:57.311 --> 02:03:00.311
Yeah, he really loves getting into the details.
02:03:00.311 --> 02:03:05.261
He used to be an amazing actor in high school, and I thought he was going to be in Hollywood.
02:03:05.341 --> 02:03:05.612
Interesting.
02:03:05.622 --> 02:03:10.252
And he ended up, you know, going into biology, and now he's in data analytics.
02:03:10.721 --> 02:03:14.502
Wonderful, wonderful guy, but he's definitely not my type.
02:03:14.731 --> 02:03:19.832
Outgoing anymore for some strange reason is so what's the opposite of outgoing?
02:03:19.832 --> 02:03:23.162
That would be, I guess he's become shy, introverted.
02:03:23.162 --> 02:03:23.402
Yeah.
02:03:23.462 --> 02:03:29.912
I had to go from being introverted as a kid to becoming outgoing in order to do what I do, and he went the other direction.
02:03:30.261 --> 02:03:33.921
And so he's introverted now and I don't know why.
02:03:34.311 --> 02:03:37.942
Anyway, um, my daughter is just, um.
02:03:38.551 --> 02:03:43.051
I am a wonderful, creative person, but also very hardworking like I am.
02:03:43.271 --> 02:03:43.511
Yeah.
02:03:43.532 --> 02:03:45.481
So, hardworking, creative person.
02:03:45.532 --> 02:03:45.912
Fair enough.
02:03:45.912 --> 02:03:47.072
We can allow a hyphen right there.
02:03:47.072 --> 02:03:47.471
Okay.
02:03:47.851 --> 02:03:50.122
Uh, faith or politics next?
02:03:50.202 --> 02:03:53.652
Um, I probably should avoid politics.
02:03:53.931 --> 02:03:54.591
Oh, no.
02:03:54.641 --> 02:03:54.992
Come on.
02:03:54.992 --> 02:03:57.011
It's, uh, who are you excited about in politics?
02:03:57.011 --> 02:04:03.162
Um, I'm just against Trump.
02:04:03.231 --> 02:04:05.872
I love, I've been a Republican most of my life.
02:04:05.891 --> 02:04:06.381
All right.
02:04:06.431 --> 02:04:08.108
And I, and I stopped being a Republican.
02:04:08.108 --> 02:04:09.122
So you'll vote for Biden?
02:04:09.221 --> 02:04:11.471
Or will you vote for RFK or something?
02:04:11.721 --> 02:04:14.391
I'll vote for Biden in order to be a vote against Trump.
02:04:14.421 --> 02:04:14.782
Okay.
02:04:15.006 --> 02:04:18.237
Cause I'm a Republican at heart, but not with him.
02:04:18.417 --> 02:04:18.837
Really?
02:04:18.917 --> 02:04:21.127
Uh, he's just, um, you know.
02:04:21.197 --> 02:04:22.266
Just his personality?
02:04:22.266 --> 02:04:23.846
Is it a January 6th thing?
02:04:23.846 --> 02:04:35.476
Like, where, where does your I read, I thought I was in college when I read his book, and, you know, basically how he lied and cheated and, you know, went bankrupt on the banks in order to cheat them out of money and cheat his supplier out of money.
02:04:35.476 --> 02:04:37.006
He's like this guy's a scumbag.
02:04:37.157 --> 02:04:42.216
Yeah, this, you know, and, and I, it's, you know, I, I refuse to be a businessman.
02:04:42.981 --> 02:04:54.421
You know, with that kind of a moral code, you know, and so to have him as a president of our country with that low a moral code, you know, no, I don't appreciate that.
02:04:54.421 --> 02:05:03.881
Do you think, uh, without trying to offend our sitting president, like, do you think Biden's is actually running our country right now, though?
02:05:03.881 --> 02:05:06.091
Do you think he's got the mental capacity to do that?
02:05:06.171 --> 02:05:09.112
I think he's, um, you know, has enough.
02:05:09.537 --> 02:05:13.386
People around him to, to, to, to help, help do it right.
02:05:13.386 --> 02:05:15.117
What do you think is wrong with our system though?
02:05:15.117 --> 02:05:21.877
I, I still think he made a huge, you know, blunder just a few weeks ago on Easter, the day before Easter to say this.
02:05:21.877 --> 02:05:22.426
Oh my god.
02:05:22.506 --> 02:05:24.686
The, the Easter Trans visibility day.
02:05:25.082 --> 02:05:28.962
I mean, hello, that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard, you know?
02:05:28.971 --> 02:05:35.162
And so, well, it wasn't him, like it was somebody in his office that posted on his Twitter, probably, I guess.
02:05:35.162 --> 02:05:35.601
I don't know.
02:05:35.601 --> 02:05:36.582
I don't know.
02:05:37.561 --> 02:05:38.452
I just think it's sad.
02:05:38.452 --> 02:05:43.652
He's somebody should have stopped that one and not double down.
02:05:43.662 --> 02:05:46.016
Like they double down more and more as they get older.
02:05:46.016 --> 02:05:47.497
the weekend grew hotter.
02:05:47.497 --> 02:05:56.777
Unfortunately, I mean, the problem is I can't even think of a younger, you know, anybody in politics that I would get one over either one of those two.
02:05:57.067 --> 02:06:03.396
So it's sort of, we're at a weird void of politics that there isn't, you know, like RFK.
02:06:07.476 --> 02:06:08.877
What little I know about him.
02:06:08.936 --> 02:06:09.737
He's okay.
02:06:10.697 --> 02:06:11.646
Let's do a couple of podcasts.
02:06:11.646 --> 02:06:16.796
He's been on several two and three hour podcasts with Lex Friedman with, okay.
02:06:17.032 --> 02:06:18.181
Joel Rogan with others.
02:06:18.462 --> 02:06:23.082
I've seen, my dad watched his movie and was very positive about it.
02:06:23.921 --> 02:06:28.412
I never knew anything about him I'm very Republican until, until Trump came along.
02:06:28.712 --> 02:06:33.282
If you read the real Anthony Fauci uh, you'll also have some uh, uh, Okay.
02:06:33.341 --> 02:06:38.362
Uh, good lighthearted reading about our corruption of our medical industrial complex as well.
02:06:38.962 --> 02:06:57.306
Um, anything else in the political sphere that you're, uh, aside from like national elections, which don't matter much, like where are you at in the, you've, you've said you're kind of Republican by trait, but you've gotten a lot of like spinoff and, you know, government Loans and grants and things like that.
02:06:57.317 --> 02:07:00.676
That's, uh, that's good for government to do.
02:07:00.756 --> 02:07:01.106
Yeah.
02:07:01.266 --> 02:07:01.466
Absolutely.
02:07:01.466 --> 02:07:02.006
Those things.
02:07:02.067 --> 02:07:02.256
Yeah.
02:07:02.256 --> 02:07:02.407
Yeah.
02:07:02.407 --> 02:07:06.296
Because especially if you're gonna try and stand up hydrogen.
02:07:06.476 --> 02:07:06.686
Right.
02:07:06.686 --> 02:07:07.676
And hydrogen is difficult.
02:07:07.756 --> 02:07:08.136
Right.
02:07:08.426 --> 02:07:13.157
Like SpaceX wouldn't really exist without government subsidies at the beginning of that.
02:07:13.157 --> 02:07:15.226
When they go, well our space program sucks.
02:07:15.226 --> 02:07:15.981
Can anybody else do it?
02:07:16.322 --> 02:07:16.771
Do it.
02:07:16.782 --> 02:07:17.192
Do it.
02:07:17.511 --> 02:07:17.851
Right.
02:07:18.051 --> 02:07:18.372
Yep.
02:07:18.412 --> 02:07:23.301
And then Jeff Bezos has tried and really doesn't have rockets that compete with SpaceX yet.
02:07:23.311 --> 02:07:23.341
Right.
02:07:23.362 --> 02:07:23.801
Not at all.
02:07:24.212 --> 02:07:29.202
And so, you know, it's not, you know, I mean, I admire Right.
02:07:29.221 --> 02:07:33.782
And Jeff Bezos has been trying for ten years and he's not very good at it yet still.
02:07:34.141 --> 02:07:34.481
Right.
02:07:35.221 --> 02:07:35.431
Right.
02:07:35.431 --> 02:07:38.181
Enough to send Captain Kirk up into space for a moment.
02:07:38.532 --> 02:07:39.042
Exactly.
02:07:39.072 --> 02:07:39.542
Or something.
02:07:39.801 --> 02:07:40.742
So, yeah.
02:07:40.761 --> 02:07:48.572
I mean, Elon Musk is brilliant and, um, has his flaws, but so does every human being has flaws.
02:07:48.582 --> 02:07:57.442
So, you know, it's a matter of the extent of the flaws and where do you want to put those flaws, you know, in the White House or, or where, you know?
02:07:57.521 --> 02:08:05.622
What do you think about the, uh, The free speech debate going on right now, especially with regards to the Brazil, have you seen that news over the weekend?
02:08:05.872 --> 02:08:13.421
No, I didn't I tend to not watch news in order to stay focused on there's yeah, that's fair There's evidence.
02:08:13.452 --> 02:08:26.027
Maybe we'll say that Silva and his like Supreme Court guy that was kind of the guy that let Silva out to repeat the president again, um, that they're directly censoring a lot of accounts.
02:08:26.037 --> 02:08:31.197
Almost anybody that like, likes Bolsonaro has kind of been snooped on and this and that.
02:08:31.197 --> 02:08:35.487
And so there's a real, anyway, now are you concerned with that?
02:08:35.721 --> 02:08:36.122
Yeah.
02:08:36.152 --> 02:08:41.971
I'm absolutely, I'm concerned with China, you know, suppressing their, you know, weak wiki.
02:08:42.622 --> 02:08:43.311
I forget how to pronounce it.
02:08:43.311 --> 02:08:43.952
Whatever else.
02:08:43.962 --> 02:08:44.692
Wiki and all that.
02:08:44.692 --> 02:08:46.252
Their, their, you know.
02:08:46.742 --> 02:08:47.582
How about in our country though?
02:08:47.591 --> 02:08:48.942
How about Julian Assange?
02:08:48.942 --> 02:08:49.301
Yeah.
02:08:49.341 --> 02:08:50.921
Their Muslim population.
02:08:50.921 --> 02:08:51.351
Oh, right.
02:08:51.351 --> 02:08:52.532
Their Uyghurs.
02:08:52.532 --> 02:08:52.572
Uyghurs.
02:08:52.572 --> 02:08:53.192
Yeah, right.
02:08:53.442 --> 02:08:58.832
And so that, yeah, people need to be able to live free, you know, with their own beliefs.
02:08:58.832 --> 02:09:01.582
And so I believe everyone should have their own belief.
02:09:01.921 --> 02:09:03.032
Do I believe in God?
02:09:03.032 --> 02:09:03.721
Absolutely.
02:09:03.721 --> 02:09:05.612
But am I going to do it in a church?
02:09:06.082 --> 02:09:09.421
Probably not, you know, and so, well, not ever.
02:09:09.421 --> 02:09:17.292
I actually went to church here in Fort Collins at the Unity Church, which is open to Buddhism, all different religions.
02:09:17.742 --> 02:09:20.061
And so, you know, it's, it's okay.
02:09:20.082 --> 02:09:29.912
But, you know, to me, Uh, once the really good pastor left, I left the church because, you know, it was no longer an inspiring message every Sunday.
02:09:30.492 --> 02:09:38.152
And so when the message is, you know, inspiring and it's worth spending your time going there every Sunday, it's, it's wonderful.
02:09:38.162 --> 02:09:45.962
But if it's, if it's not, you know, really going to, motivate me or do something positive for your To be positive For my life.
02:09:45.992 --> 02:09:48.686
Yeah, life or mental, you know.
02:09:49.266 --> 02:09:50.466
So where do you exercise?
02:09:50.527 --> 02:09:56.006
You mentioned, I believe in God, but then like unity and so is Jesus.
02:09:56.561 --> 02:10:00.341
Different than Hindu or Zain or things like the Christian perspective.
02:10:00.341 --> 02:10:06.641
I have, uh, again on El Audible, listened to a gentleman named Dr.
02:10:06.652 --> 02:10:13.502
Murphy, um, who has basically, uh, read a couple of books about the power of the subconscious mind.
02:10:13.601 --> 02:10:13.891
Okay.
02:10:13.942 --> 02:10:18.261
And the way he describes, you know, how the Bible was written in code.
02:10:18.452 --> 02:10:18.681
Yeah.
02:10:18.681 --> 02:10:24.551
To, you know, prevent people, you know, like the Hitlers of the world from using it incorrectly.
02:10:24.981 --> 02:10:57.292
Um, That, that, you know, I believe what, you know, he says about God and, you know, and how the Bible, when you unbundle the code, is really a, um, a treatise about self help and how you can, you know, basically, Maximize your own capability to succeed, succeed at what you're doing in, you know, in love and life and, you know, being a good person in society and not cheating people, you know, that that's, Yeah, I think there's a very secular way to approach the Bible.
02:10:57.362 --> 02:10:57.692
Right.
02:10:57.771 --> 02:11:13.162
Uh, you know, I tend to fall in the line that Jesus was pretty special and that there's a lot of inspired words and even without any of that, It's like as good of a, like, do this and prosper kind of a guidebook as you're going to find.
02:11:13.192 --> 02:11:13.582
Right.
02:11:13.721 --> 02:11:15.952
And so I would recommend Dr.
02:11:15.952 --> 02:11:20.891
Murphy's interpretation of the Bible as a way, it's one interpretation.
02:11:20.891 --> 02:11:21.091
Right.
02:11:21.112 --> 02:11:28.431
He does, he is a theological scholar as well as a chemist as well as, as one other degree, I don't remember what.
02:11:28.771 --> 02:11:33.492
But he's, you know, his interpretation of the Bible, makes sense to me.
02:11:33.902 --> 02:11:47.002
And so I know that sense of God in that sense, his sense of, um, you know, how to utilize the lessons in the Bible to succeed in life is, is very positive.
02:11:50.051 --> 02:11:57.721
Multiple time entrepreneur, like having faith that we're going to get that 50 million we need to make this next step.
02:11:58.351 --> 02:12:00.641
Um, those are all very challenging.
02:12:00.652 --> 02:12:05.391
You know, that's what, that's why I say faith instead of religion is what does drive you forward?
02:12:05.452 --> 02:12:07.091
You know, what do you have faith in?
02:12:07.141 --> 02:12:09.952
Like, where do you think humanity's in a hundred years?
02:12:09.952 --> 02:12:10.822
You got faith in that?
02:12:11.202 --> 02:12:24.782
Again, you know, sometimes you have to make your own method of having faith, which is why I decided to put the sailboat on pause and do this plastic thing because the timing was right.
02:12:24.801 --> 02:12:27.671
The, you know, the, the opportunity was right.
02:12:27.671 --> 02:12:29.221
The opportunity is profitable.
02:12:29.582 --> 02:12:30.726
You know, you know, I could.
02:12:30.726 --> 02:12:35.167
You know, had yet to figure out how I was gonna make the sailboat company profitable Right.
02:12:35.167 --> 02:12:39.157
You know, it, I was gonna work on breaking the speed record, but, you know, uh Right.
02:12:39.162 --> 02:12:41.792
That's, I got something that really rich people already can do more.
02:12:41.792 --> 02:12:42.112
Right.
02:12:42.306 --> 02:12:46.447
Well that's why I figured I'll get rich and then go start sponsor my sailboat.
02:12:46.452 --> 02:12:46.896
Right, right.
02:12:46.987 --> 02:12:53.231
Um, and then people understand my crazy idea, but I do have crazy ideas that people don't understand until I.
02:12:53.837 --> 02:12:54.787
prove them to them.
02:12:55.216 --> 02:13:02.396
And so this is one that, you know, is a good for society, good for the world, good for energy, good for everything.
02:13:02.396 --> 02:13:05.256
So the win, win, win, win, win is strong for profits.
02:13:05.296 --> 02:13:11.056
And so I don't have to start a nonprofit charity to go clean up plastics, right?
02:13:11.056 --> 02:13:16.266
I can start a company that will actually pay its own bills and re repay loans.
02:13:16.306 --> 02:13:16.577
Yep.
02:13:16.671 --> 02:13:22.122
And ultimately return a lot to shareholders, return a lot to shareholders as well by a growth in value.
02:13:22.481 --> 02:13:22.731
Yeah.
02:13:22.761 --> 02:13:24.122
You know, we could be a 1.
02:13:24.122 --> 02:13:38.442
5 billion company in seven years, obviously that's a target, you know, it may take us 10 years to get there, but we're going to go there because it's, it's not only a lot of money, it's a lot of profitability.
02:13:38.442 --> 02:13:44.612
Therefore, like you said, a return to shareholders and a return to mother earth and a way to keep this crap.
02:13:44.827 --> 02:13:52.556
Out of Mother Earth, because I've been apologizing to, you know, Mother Earth for 15 years every time I throw away a piece of plastic.
02:13:52.617 --> 02:13:52.997
Right.
02:13:53.686 --> 02:13:56.877
Well, uh, you know, shoot for the stars, you'll land on the moon.
02:13:57.417 --> 02:13:59.917
Uh, said somebody that wasn't very good at astrophysics, I imagine.
02:14:00.527 --> 02:14:05.106
Well, the very last card my mother gave me before she died was exactly the opposite.
02:14:05.106 --> 02:14:08.106
Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
02:14:08.167 --> 02:14:10.127
Oh, maybe that's the one I've been thinking about.
02:14:11.087 --> 02:14:13.317
Um, we always do the final segment.
02:14:13.356 --> 02:14:20.457
the loco experience, the craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to share with our curious listeners.
02:14:20.466 --> 02:14:21.796
Craziest experience.
02:14:21.846 --> 02:14:24.016
Well, did you crash a race car or anything like that?
02:14:24.016 --> 02:14:25.447
I did crash my race car.
02:14:25.877 --> 02:14:36.832
But I think the craziest experience, uh, for me was sort of like when I learned sort of like the power of my, the mental aspect of practice.
02:14:37.292 --> 02:14:46.391
And so I learned, you know, I, I was, I read a book called super learning and what they taught you in super learning was how to use like mental practice.
02:14:46.391 --> 02:14:55.742
So I know I've heard nowadays, you know, basketball players, you know, they'll visualize, visualize and practice dunking the shots, dunking the shots.
02:14:55.742 --> 02:15:04.421
And then they, in real life, they, you know, the subconscious mind takes over and they dunk the shots a lot more often because they've practiced in their mind.
02:15:04.431 --> 02:15:06.872
Yeah, well, I did that for race car driving.
02:15:06.931 --> 02:15:14.931
Oh, and so what was really bizarre was I practiced and practiced, you know, how to drive the race car on a specific racetrack.
02:15:15.002 --> 02:15:15.992
Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
02:15:15.992 --> 02:15:20.572
You're like kind of Memorizing this track virtually, like playing a video game in your head almost.
02:15:20.601 --> 02:15:21.372
Exactly.
02:15:21.702 --> 02:15:25.051
And so I did that for probably a month or so.
02:15:25.412 --> 02:15:30.631
And then I got to the racetrack for the first time after having done that mental practice.
02:15:31.141 --> 02:15:36.921
And I got in the race car and the entire race had nothing to do with the touching the race car.
02:15:37.261 --> 02:15:41.212
I literally could not remember ever touching the pedals.
02:15:41.261 --> 02:15:43.942
I could not remember shifting the shifter.
02:15:43.942 --> 02:15:50.051
And you have to, like on that racetrack, you had to shift the car from third to fourth five times a lap.
02:15:50.681 --> 02:15:59.917
I could not remember physically touching Anything in the race car, the whole race, once it got started was, Oh, that guy's an asshole.
02:15:59.926 --> 02:16:04.737
So when I swerve to the, to the right, he's going to cut me off.
02:16:05.087 --> 02:16:11.976
So when I, so if I swerve to the right and then immediately swerve back again, I can pass him on the outside.
02:16:12.532 --> 02:16:13.692
Oh, it worked.
02:16:13.952 --> 02:16:15.752
You know, because I'm doing it in real time.
02:16:15.761 --> 02:16:17.952
Right, and you don't have to think about the turns.
02:16:17.952 --> 02:16:21.351
I no longer had to think about driving the race car.
02:16:21.601 --> 02:16:23.502
It was all about strategy.
02:16:23.582 --> 02:16:24.072
Oh, fascinating.
02:16:24.082 --> 02:16:41.272
And I, and, and, and the weirdest part is I even not having met, These people other than in pit lane, you know, and met them once or twice, like barely knowing these people I could, I had a sense of their personality because I had raced against these cars.
02:16:41.281 --> 02:16:42.971
So I knew what that car looked like.
02:16:42.971 --> 02:16:51.492
And I, but all of a sudden I had all the mental power to spend my time strategizing how I was going to pass everybody.
02:16:52.346 --> 02:16:57.287
And I literally did pass everybody on the race and won the race.
02:16:57.336 --> 02:17:00.807
And it was sort of like, and I don't remember touching the race car.
02:17:01.106 --> 02:17:01.457
That's fascinating.
02:17:01.506 --> 02:17:04.826
It was sort of like, I mean, I sort of remember my hands and steering the wheel.
02:17:05.637 --> 02:17:13.451
But literally I had to shift, I had to do all had all that space for thinking that you, Yeah, because the practice had made all of that subconscious.
02:17:13.451 --> 02:17:33.301
And to me, that just changed my entire perspective on life because it's like, Oh, you can actually practice something and internalize it and basically take that out of, you know, take all that complexity out of your challenge, out of the challenge, so you didn't have to think and drive, you could just think.
02:17:33.441 --> 02:17:33.711
Yeah.
02:17:33.762 --> 02:17:35.592
And I'm like, I don't believe that.
02:17:35.877 --> 02:17:40.356
That was, that was like a miracle moment in my life that changed my life.
02:17:40.941 --> 02:17:45.332
I uh, I wonder if you've seen that recent movie, um, on the SimDriver.
02:17:45.371 --> 02:17:45.762
Yes.
02:17:45.801 --> 02:17:46.182
Did you?
02:17:46.231 --> 02:17:46.551
Yes.
02:17:46.621 --> 02:17:48.262
And that was a good movie, I thought.
02:17:48.432 --> 02:17:51.631
That, that, yeah, that was sort of like what I did in my head.
02:17:51.641 --> 02:17:52.111
Right, right.
02:17:52.111 --> 02:17:58.412
And he did it on, you know, in the, in the Right, and because he got so much practice in the, behind the video game screen.
02:17:58.422 --> 02:18:04.727
Like, but, but they showed that through, like how he could perceive Those personalities and stuff a little bit too.
02:18:04.777 --> 02:18:05.117
Right.
02:18:05.256 --> 02:18:07.586
And you could, you know, I drive this corner different.
02:18:07.797 --> 02:18:08.047
Right.
02:18:08.066 --> 02:18:11.387
Because I drove it in the simulation different than everybody says.
02:18:11.447 --> 02:18:11.717
Right.
02:18:11.727 --> 02:18:12.887
How it should be driven.
02:18:13.397 --> 02:18:15.756
And, and different was actually better.
02:18:15.766 --> 02:18:16.936
Sometimes can be better, yeah.
02:18:17.066 --> 02:18:17.326
Yeah.
02:18:17.406 --> 02:18:18.096
Huh, so cool.
02:18:18.426 --> 02:18:21.256
Um, well Ed, this has been a very enjoyable conversation.
02:18:21.256 --> 02:18:24.906
I've been using my mental skills as best I can to keep up.
02:18:25.037 --> 02:18:27.836
But, uh, I hope our listeners enjoyed it as much as I did.
02:18:28.016 --> 02:18:29.416
Thank you very much for having me.
02:18:29.447 --> 02:18:31.777
Yep, Godspeed and good luck on the, on the 50 mil.
02:18:31.951 --> 02:18:32.422
Okay.
02:18:32.871 --> 02:18:33.111
Alright.
02:18:33.262 --> 02:18:33.801
Thank you.
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