Alumifuel Power Corp. (AFPW)

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AFPW - David Cade CEO Interview - Transcribed

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PHILADELPHIA, PA--(Marketwire - 05/23/11) - Early production stage hydrogen generation company AlumiFuel Power, Inc. ("API"), the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based wholly owned operating subsidiary of AlumiFuel Power Corporation (OTC.BB:AFPW - News) (the "Company"), announced today that API President & CEO David Cade was interviewed on May 20 by O Six Media, LLC, a New York City based international financial news and media company.



On Alumifuel's Website:
http://www.alumifuelpowerinc.com/2011/05/24/ceo-of-afpw-david-cade-interviewed-by-osix-business-media/


Good day from New York and welcome to another O Six exclusive interview. Our guest today is David Cade, president and chief executive officer at Alumifuel Power. Alumifuel Power trades over the counter bulletin board under the ticker AFPW. Good day David, thanks for joining us on World Business Broadcast.

My pleasure, Todd.

Dave, I thought you might begin with a brief introduction and overview of the company.

Yes, we are in the alternative energy business; that is, we are involved in energy sources that are renewable, and are not necessarily in the marketplace today, but a great future for market entry. The company has been going since May of 2008, when we formed the company, took it public, and brought together the intellectual property (IP) that gave us a leg up in this particular arena that we're in. We've been in the late-development/early-production stage in recent months, taking the technology from what I would call a “laboratory curiosity” to a viable product. In fact, multiple products having to do with the generation of hydrogen on-site and on-demand, particularly for portable applications, which is our sweet spot.

Dave, expand a bit more, if you would, on some of these core products and technologies, and give us a better sense for your target markets and applications.

Certainly. When we generate our hydrogen – by the way, a byproduct is heat, which can also be used as a power source, which we'll discuss – no external power is required. We do this through the chemical reaction; it's exothermic, which means it creates heat – the chemical reaction between aluminum powder and water and proprietary chemical additives, that can either speed up or slow down that reaction. The applications involve portable power, remote power, backup power for both military and commercial, and it's really a global market. We can feed fuel cells with our hydrogen fuel source, and that generates electricity for a number of applications, obviously. In fact, the term that's used in the industry is “gen-set” which normally means a gasoline-based generator to generate electricity in the field; we can do that with hydrogen-feeding fuel cells.

We can also drive turbines, and the particular application we're looking at is unmanned, undersea vehicle propulsion, and the heat does this, but our hydrogen can also feed fuel cells that can also get involved in underwater propulsion. This is something we've been working with the U.S. Navy on, and are heavily involved in that; we can talk about that in a little more detail later.

We also fill and launch weather balloons, and there are millions of these launched annually by meteorological groups and military organizations around the world. In fact, we have a unique product, called the Portable Balloon Inflation System 1000, which generates 1,000 liters of hydrogen in 20 minutes, to launch a five- or six-foot weather balloon, replacing very large, heavy, K-cylinders, 150-lb. K-cylinders, which are very expensive to distribute and awkward to handle. Now, the way we do this is in a cartridge, which can be commercial cans, either Coke-can sized, or Monster drink, 32-oz. size, or other sizes – where we put our proprietary powder mixes in a proprietary stuffing, if you will, into the can. The can then gets inserted into a tube, which becomes a generator because you add water to the can of powder in the tube, and hydrogen starts to be generated immediately. With two of these 32-oz cans, we can generate 1,000 liters in 20 minutes for the weather balloon. But that same technology can be used for other applications, such as portable power by feeding fuel cells, and also underwater vehicles.

Obviously, our customers include military, and that includes both an army type, marine type, and a naval type. We're even looking at some Air Force things. We're also looking at commercial players, although the military tends to advance technology faster, adopt and adapt to new technology faster, and then it becomes kind of an accepted technology, and then it goes into a commercial stream. That's usually how it works.

Dave, how extensive is the company's IP and patent portfolio?

Well, we have no issued patents, as you know – the patent process starts with disclosures, then you go to provisional patents, then nonprovisional patents, and then they get issued – we have what we call an omnibus patent which is pending with the U.S. Patent office, which covers a number of different applications that we are involved in. We have a very strong patent attorney. There are literally hundreds of patents out there involving aluminum powder and water, and the chemical reaction that is created by that mixture. However, in almost all the cases, it's just a laboratory curiosity; we've gone way beyond that and focused on very specific applications.

We've learned to control the reaction: whether you need a fast reaction, like launching the weather balloon in twenty minutes, or a very slow reaction, where you might want to drive an underwater vehicle slowly over a long period of time. We've learned how to control that, and that's a very important part of our intellectual property, and it involves not only that single omnibus patent, but the proprietary know-how – which, frankly, is even more important than the patent. Once we get an issued patent, we wouldn't want somebody to take that patent and figure out what we're doing. This is not unusual for a high-tech company. Most of our really cool stuff is proprietary know-how, but the patents do give you legal coverage. We've got a number of disclosures that are ready to be put into provisional patents.

Of course, that takes a lot of money as you file through the patent office, and of course that is an objective and a strategy of ours, going forward. But with the omnibus patent that we have, we are totally covered across the board with the applications we're pursuing. And like I said, we have a very capable patent attorney. We've scoured the marketplace; we're not infringing on anybody's patent; this is totally new art, and has been documented as such. I must say, we've also got a filing under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which covers the developed countries of Europe and Asia. That's also very, very important filing. Even though, when you file in the U.S., you generally have coverage around the world, we have a Patent Cooperation Treaty filing which makes that even stronger overseas. So that's really our IP – those patent filings, and the very important proprietary know-how.

How is the company positioned in terms of strategic partnerships and alliances, and will the company look to N&A partnerships in the near term?

Well, let's talk about our current partners. We've got a couple different categories: What I would call “path to market” partners; probably our closest path-to-market partner is a company called Ingenium Technologies, out of Rockford, Illinois. It's a small but very powerful power-systems integrator and engineering firm. They're our partner for portable power, and they understand the power market, whether it's a turbine, a fuel cell, a thermoelectric converter, any of these Rankine or Braelin engines kind of thing. And so they're a wonderful partner for us, because we, with our fuel source, feed whatever power plant they have, and together we're looking at a number of different things. Together, we won a Navy Research and Development contract for a novel new fuel for unmanned, undersea vehicles; and in fact, that was a small contract, but the Navy is so excited about the notion of using other than battery technology for powering UUVs – unmanned, undersea vehicles – that they've come out with two very large new programs this calendar year, to bring into the operational Navy new power sources beyond batteries. They've given up on batteries as being too short-legged: not enough mission duration, not enough time on station. We've got a technology, for example, that will provide five to ten times the energy density of a lithium battery – I used to run a lithium battery company, so I'm well familiar with that – we have five to ten times the energy density, which means five to ten times the run time of a lithium battery. And then you look at not only generating the hydrogen, but generating the heat that we do, we can power these UUVs on station not only for hours, but days. This is still in the development stage, but this is a tremendous new promise for the Navy, to have these unmanned undersea vehicles which can be used in a lot of different missions, including things like port surveillance and other things, that they can't use in port today because they're just too short-legged. So it's a very exciting thing, and we're right in the middle of that with Ingenium – that's our partner for that. We're also looking at, with Ingenium, working with fuel-cell companies to develop a land-based portable power system replacing the gasoline gen-sets. So that's the kind of work we do with Ingenium.

Our weather balloon partner is Kaymont Consolidated, of Long Island, which is the world's largest weather-balloon distributor. They have a tremendous understanding of that world market, which includes meteorological groups in all countries, as well as military, at least in allied countries. They provide the balloons; we provide the PBIS 1000, which is basically this hydrogen generator, that does generate that hydrogen that fills the balloons, and then you launch them all at the same time once they get filled. So Kaymont is our partner for that application.

We have two production partners, Apex Piping of Delaware does all of our pressure vessels, and as you can imagine, for hydrogen and for some cases the water we put on board these generators, we need standard pressure vessels that have an industry code. And that's the work of Apex.

We also have a cartridge assembler, ActionPak of Bristol, Pennsylvania, involved in actually stuffing and manufacturing our cartridges. So we have some tremendous, world-class partners that we're very proud of. I must say this: With Ingenium, as we look at some of these programs, such as these large Navy programs, together we can pull in other players. And in fact, in one case, a very large defense contractor – a name you would recognize, but I'm not at liberty to use – big players are very interested in this technology, because it's technology that can be used to drive platforms that they're interested in manufacturing, and being a prime contractor on. And together with Ingenium, we've got a lot of those relationships as well, with all the big players in the aerospace/defense world.

Briefly, in closing, let's recap, if you would leave us with just a few quick bullet points here. Why should investors consider Alumifuel Power as a long-term investment opportunity?

Well, the alternative-energy market is still relatively young, I might say. Hydrogen was viewed five or six years ago as a hydrogen economy, and it's going to be here – and when that fell off the map, because automobiles were not ready to take that application A: fuel cells were too expensive, and B: you'd have to replace the whole gas-station infrastructure – hydrogen fell off the map. However, there are many other applications with hydrogen as a fuel source that are ideal, that are beginning to come into play. Stationary power, whether it's as a standalone system or a portable-based, remote-power system where you're driving a fuel cell. For example, in California, there are companies that are not on the public grid. They have a large fuel cell driven by either hydrogen or natural gas, and that's a relatively new application called distributed power. Forklift trucks replacing batteries has become widespread among big outfits that have large forklift fleets. Bus and truck fleets – not automobiles, but bus and truck fleets – where it makes sense to convert them, and there are fueling stations to handle those kinds of things.

Hydrogen is here to stay. It kind of fell into the background several years ago, but it's coming back. I must say, I already mentioned natural gas. That's another one we're looking at as a synergistic technology, and looking at alternatives for getting into that size of the business. We've got a hundred years plus, in the United States, of natural gas resources, and this thing in Pennsylvania called the Marcellus Shale deposit is the largest. It burns cleaner than gasoline, it's one-tenth the cost right now. It will allow us to reduce payments for foreign oil. We're sending a billion dollars a day to Arab countries for oil. Unconscionable. We can get around that through the combination of natural gas and hydrogen as we go forward, and so the natural gas I'm talking about is not just heating, which people equate it to today, but vehicular applications, involving fleets in particular, and this distributed power, where you feed large fuel cells.

So in addition to expanding the current business base that I described, and in each of those applications – underwater vehicles, the balloons, the portable power, replacing large, heavy, awkward K-cylinders – we think that is a good business in and of itself, as we become the global standard for commercializing this unique technology that we have. And we're the first ones that have product-ized this aluminum powder and water into a commercially viable product. That, combined with the other markets we're looking at in the alternative-energy arena, is just an ideal investment as you move forward in this century.

Thank you for the update, the overview, and for joining us today on World Business Broadcast.

My pleasure, Todd.

Our guest today has been David Cade, president and chief executive officer at Alumifuel Power. Alumifuel Power trades over the counter bulletin board under the ticker AFPW.