069 Rob Alexander, CEO AlumaPower

Rob Alexander (00:00)Now fuel grade aluminum, when we make aluminum today for this aluminum on my iPhone, this is aluminum here. Yeah. Exactly.Mark Hinaman (00:08)for this little tea I'm drinking right?Rob Alexander (00:12)This has to be, when you smelt this, 99.7 % pure. Those impurities are really, really important.I need 88 % pure.Okay. Right, so now.Mark Hinaman (00:26)That's great. That's a greatthreshold to have, right? Like that's way easier than 99.Rob Alexander (00:34)It'sway easier. It's way easier.Mark Hinaman (00:36)It's kind of like school,right? It's way easier to get an 88 % on test than 99 % onRob Alexander (00:42)It is way easier to get an 88%.Mark Hinaman (01:49)Okay. Welcome to another episode of the fire to fish and podcast where we talk about energy, dense fuels and how they can better human lives. Today I'm joined by Rob Alexander, the CEO of a Luma Corp, a Luma power corporation. So Rob, how you doing, man?Rob Alexander (02:04)I'm fantastic Mark. Good morning to you.Mark Hinaman (02:07)Good morning. Yeah, yeah. I'm really, really excited about this conversation. We've got kind of a different technology, but claims for more energy-dense batteries, even more energy-dense than lithium ion, which is very fitting for the show. So Rob, for the audience's perspective, I guess, do you want to give a quick 30 to 60 second overview of kind of aluminum power and what it is that you guys are chasing?Rob Alexander (02:31)Yeah, sure. So essentially what we've done is we've reinvented the aluminum air battery. And an aluminum air battery in some ways is a misnomer because when you extract energy from the aluminum, it's kind of a one way transaction. It's not like a rechargeable battery like lithium ion. It's more akin to a diesel generator where you put diesel in and you get electrical energy out.And I'll get into that and discuss exactly what we did to change it. But essentially what it now means is we've got this generator. We call it a galvanic generator that, you know, where you take fuel in the form of a fuel disk. And some people see video. This is a fuel disk. This would go into our device and it would produce ⁓ clean electricity and heat if you could use it. And that's really the story. And so it becomes a wonderful new way to transport.energy, clean energy, and then extract it wherever you need it. And that's what we're doing.Mark Hinaman (03:25)That's awesome, man. Good for you. Very exciting. I'm stoked to dive into kind of the tech and technical details. As you said before we started recording, you can tell from my public persona that I'm a nerd. And so I'm stoked to talk about it more. But first I want learn about you, Rob. What's your background? Where are from? How'd you your start in the energy space?Rob Alexander (03:45)There you go. Well, I'm 61 years old, so man, we could talk forever, but I won't. No, I'm 61. I'm fully 61. I guess, you know, I was thinking about how to answer the question. You know, it's, I thought I might start with a story actually, because it got recounted to me by my grandmother not that long ago. So, you know, seven years old, if you can imagine being seven.Mark Hinaman (03:50)You don't look 61. The Peg G younger.Rob Alexander (04:11)⁓ And I love to build forts. you know, and so I kind of was at this stage, I built one that was on the ground. thought, okay, what's the next step? Hey, I'm going to try for a tree fort.And so my parents were away, my grandmother was taking care of me and I think I was in grade two and I'm Canadian and Canada, know, grade two. You haven't really studied a lot of physics and leverage and things like that. But I'm like, okay, I'm gonna build this thing. We lived in a subdivision and there was lots of wood around. So I had this nice piece of plywood and I'm thinking, okay, I'm gonna build my fort up there in that tree. And so I'm like, okay, how am gonna get that wood up there? I'm all alone.And I'm I found this rope. I'll tie the rope to the wood. Let me see one on the plywood. I'll take the other end. I'll climb up the tree. And I'll try and lift this thing up into the tree. tried that, and I'm like, I'm going to fall off. That's not too smart. Got to be smarter than that. So then I had this brilliant idea, Mark. And I said, OK, what if I take that rope and I tie it around my waist?And then there's this nice branch. I'll just jump off the branch, right? And try and, I've done it. It's about eight, 10 feet up in the air. I've kind of jumped from that high before. I'm just going to jump off and land on the ground and then it'll pull the piece of plywood up into the tree. And you know, that's what I did. I jumped off.but I kind failed to kind of think through on a whole bunch of dimensions, you know, like what was I going to do when it got up there? But the biggest issue was I didn't really figure out which one was heavier, the piece of wood or me. And so as I flying down there trying to land it with my feet, all of a sudden I get whipped up and now I'm dangling over top of the ground. I can't touch the ground and I've...Basically the board didn't move. That's where I started. I've always been curious. I like to build things. I'm impatient, somewhat stupid. And it was scary. And the reason I bring it up is because my grandmother told me this story and I've completely forgotten it. I thought, man, that kind of summarizes a lot of what I'm like.So there I was dangling. It was bad. I'd actually, didn't know my knots, so I'd actually made a slip knot around my gut. And so that thing was really, really tight. And I was starting to panic a bit. And so I did what any seven-year-old does. I started screaming bloody murder. And my grandmother thankfully came out and rescued me.Mark Hinaman (06:32)Yeah.Rob Alexander (06:35)So that's kind of where I think I was just built that way. I mean, I think, you know, that's a young age. I've got my grandson upstairs and he's a little bit like that, just curious. I would say the other big influence for me was really my father. So he's an entrepreneur and also an engineer, chemical engineer. Didn't like chemical engineering and then went into business. And he had a huge impact on me.I did pretty well in school, know, ended up wanting to follow a little bit in his footsteps. Went into engineering, got into Princeton, down in New Jersey, took electrical engineering, computer science. But before I'd gotten there, I'd actually worked a lot in the family company. And I really got a feel for, you know, how they work and how big, it wasn't a huge organization, maybe 100, 150 people.But, you know, family company always borrowed, you know, money from the bank, know, covenants, there's a lot of covenant pressure. So, you know, end of the month we had to make our covenants, call the kids in and I'd be working my forklift or doing whatever on the weekends, you know, to ship products. So you really learn when you're in a family company, you learn and get exposed to businesses and that had a big influence. So I to Princeton undergrad. One of the things my fatherof failed on in a few different ways. said, it probably really, if you're to go into business, you got to understand finance. You got to understand how to do, how to value businesses. He kind of messed up a bit. so I, you know, kept coming out of Princeton. I'm an engineer. The obvious thing was do something related to your degree.Instead, I just knocked on every door on Wall Street possible. I think it was 21 of them. The 21st one let me in, which was a kid of Peabody. So I worked on Wall Street as an analyst, which was fantastic. Took a company public, did some &A work. So that gave me an exposure just to the finance side. And then...87 hit, which was this big crash. I'd just gotten my company out public three days before the crash. And so I was traveling around the world and yeah, yeah, was black money, exactly. Yeah, we got out on that. We were the last IPO before that crash. The company was called HMSS. It was a home medical care company, first of its kind.Mark Hinaman (08:35)Black Friday or Black Monday or...Yeah. Yeah.⁓ man.Rob, I can tellyou like you like learning lessons the hard way, right? from, how do I learn about physics? Well, test with my body as a seven year old, right? Like build this human pulley system. How do I learn about finance? Take them on the IPO right before the market crashes.Rob Alexander (08:55)Yeah, I'm stupid. Yeah, if you...Yeah, No, it's...You know, you know, well, it'syou know, like it's like it's you know, smart people, you've heard this quote, I forget who said it smart people learn from other people's mistakes. I am not that smart. I tend to like make it once. I do try not to make the same mistake twice. But yes, that is very much, you know, it is a little bit of the mentality. So anyways, then how did the whole tech thing happen?Mark Hinaman (09:21)HaRob Alexander (09:34)I got in, I was traveling around the world after they gave us some money to go away and that 87 crashed and I was traveling with my wife. MIT was kicking off this new program called Leaders for Manufacturing.And it's kind of interesting in the context of what's going on, you know, in the States today. back in the late 80s, a bunch of the companies in the United States, like it was Ford and General Motors and Ocoa and Hewlett Packard, that what they were seeing was the Japanese were really dominating industries. And so they said, we've got to get manufacturing back in the United States. And so they created this program at MIT. And the whole design was put the business degreetogether with the engineering schools and try and break down the barriers between not just the business Sloan and the engineering but also between the disciplines in the engineering group. Okay, and it was started by a guy named Lester Oh and a bunch of others. So they said, hey Rob, we saw you, you know, would you be interested in coming to this? And so I did and I got a scholarship to go there. Had a huge influence. You know, okay, now I can use my tech, use business, how I'mgoing to put these things together and really focus on manufacturing and operations, which I do think is a really important piece of how you create value. So long-winded ⁓ answer, Mark, to your question that that's how I ended up kind of at the interests in technology, manufacturing, and business and kind of putting it all together.Mark Hinaman (11:00)That's awesome. I think that's one of the best answers I've ever heard, especially with the anecdote as a seven-year-old. Like, what a crude awakening into like physics 101, you know?Rob Alexander (11:11)Heheheheh YeahMark Hinaman (11:12)That's fun. Okay, Rob, what I guess, yeah, as you said, you're 61. You've had a career since then. Why don't you just tell us about some of the stories that come to mind from your career that kind of led you up to the company that you're at now. So, up to a little more power.Rob Alexander (11:32)Yeah,so if I kind of fast forward about basically what happened as I mentioned, my father was an entrepreneur. left MIT, I went and worked at McKinsey, which that program was mad at me for doing it. But I was doing strategy operations for about three years, living on a plane.My daughter was born and I was, you this isn't going to work for me and my wife. I just can't, I got to spend more time with Chelsea. And so at the same time, my father had built his business and he was like, son, I'm going to sell my business. And I said, wait, wait, you know, I'm probably overconfident. I thought I was pretty good at finance. I said, dad, before you sell it, let me take a look. I might buy it from you.And so I left McKinsey, came work with him, and ultimately did a big leverage buyout at the age of 32. And borrowed a lot of money, I think it was 68 million bucks, and bought this business from him. Which in hindsight was also stupid. I really leveraged. I didn't really listen in my finance classes, I leveraged a company that shouldn't have been leveraged like that.But it also is kind of the way you learn and you have to survive. So the company went, it had successes and failures. We grew it from about 10 million to 120 million. And it was an automotive supply company. We had a trailer hitch company and we had another one that sold to the car companies. And I learned everything there. I made big mistakes just like jumping off the tree. Learned from it and eventually had a fair bit of success with that company.And then about 2008, everybody kind of knows about what happened there. Automotive, I had both General Motors and Chrysler call me within 72 hours say, we're going bankrupt, we're not going to pay you. I think they owed me like 40 million bucks. Sorry, big deal, you know, for me. Had to restructure the business and do all that stuff. That wasn't fun.But about that same time, two guys came to me, guy named Hank Van Anndy, this big gregarious Dutchman, sales kind of oriented guy. And he's with his good friend, Jeff Sheeran. And Jeff is this incredible inventor and the CTO of Illuma Power.and just a fantastic lateral thinker. know, like I'm a decent engineer. Jeff is a brilliant inventor, creative thinker, and all the creative geniuses in Jeff, not me. And Hank had kind of taken it upon himself, said, you know, how do I help Jeff?And so they approached me and they'd heard about me and business and these different things I'd done. And they said, could you help us take these ideas from Jeff's brain and turn them into commercial successes? And we talked about values, you what are we trying to do at this stage? You know, we want to take this tech, do some good for humanity, the world, especially those most in need. And that's kind of been our mantra for 15 years. And so we've done a lot of things together. We did a business where we injection hideinjected hydrogen into a diesel engine to improve the fuel economy. That's a company called Dinosert now. But then about, I think it was 2017, Jeff called me up and said, Rob, you know, I think I've reinvented the aluminum air battery. I'm like, Jeff, what the heck's an aluminum air battery? Never heard of it. So he talked me through it andAs we kind of built the first prototypes, I funded the first patent. That's where it became clear, wow, Jeff, I think you might have a big one this time. That was the beginning of it. And that's where we are today, building that same tech that he invented back in 2017.Mark Hinaman (15:04)That's awesome. Well, I don't want to waste any more time talking about, mean, I'm sure we can come back to other stories if we have more time, but I want to learn about this air battery. So to tell us about it. In 2017, I mean, that's relatively recently, You know, on your LinkedIn it says 2020 for joining this group. Let's start with the tech. What is the tech?Rob Alexander (15:14)Yeah.Yeah, full time.So let me explain aluminum air. So when you make aluminum, you inject a whole bunch of energy into it. know, most of the aluminum in North America is made in Quebec, the province of Quebec in Canada, and it's beside a hydro dam. And what you're doing is it's an electrolysis process.So I go a little deep into the tech and essentially you got two plates, you're injecting all that energy in there and you attract the AL, the aluminum to one side and that's our aluminum that we use. And what we're really doing is we're getting all that energy back.Okay, but we're doing it at the end of the cycle for that aluminum. It's been recycled maybe 20, 30, 40 times, but eventually it becomes too dirty to be used cost effectively to be recycled again. And that's when we pick it up. So we're kind of like an end of life, a waste of fuel option. Now the way aluminum air works is you take a plate.of aluminum, it's pretty simple, you're just reversing the process. Aluminum on one side, on the other side you have an air breathing cathode. So you've got air oxygen coming in the other side. In that cathode, it's kind of like our lung. And so on the one hand you've got the cathode, the other side the aluminum is the anode, and in between is an electrolyte, we use sodium hydroxide, which is lye. Okay? And all you're doing is you're corroding the aluminum. Okay? The oxygen is coming in, you've got the actualchemical equation is you're going to ALOH3 and in that process you're releasing three electrons.which we're taking off of the cathode nanosite. It's that simple is really what's going on. Now, what wasn't simple though, is those were invented in the 60s back in the United States and Canada. And the issue was they were invented by electrochemists and chemists and everybody thought batteries stationary. So plate of aluminum, air breathing cathode. Jeff's not an electrochemist. Jeff is a man of, he's actually an industrialist.designer, self-taught really. And so he's like wait a minute I understand mechanical, you know, do I approach this? The fundamental problem and the reason you haven't heard about aluminum air, there's a few problems, but one of them is that when you wanted to stop the reaction you would drop the electrolyte, it would passivate the surface and if you put the electrolyte back in it wouldn't work again.So the military uses aluminum air for like one strike things like torpedoes or drone strikes. Yeah, the electrolyte, it works. It's very high, you know, high energy density, but you couldn't start it again. It doesn't matter with a torpedo. It kind of goes one way, right? So that's why you never saw them scale. So Jeff goes, well, wait a minute. How do I stop that passivation? And he was inspired by, he's from Scotland, inspired by some boats that weregetting rid of water on their windshields with a rotating thing. He said, what if I rotate it? What if I rotate this disc? What if when I take the electrolyte down, I actually spin this really, really fast, cause all the electrolyte to spin off and dry quickly before the passivation layer gets created? He tried it. It was like, ooh, it works. Now I can stop and start this thing.And that was kind of the key breakthrough. The other thing though, and so much more came from it, by making this into a disk, he also made it simple to load and...Sorry, this background's not very good. I wonder if I should get rid of it. Load and unload. So now you're just, it's kind of like going into a toaster, you know, or a CD drive. Simple to refuel. Instead, before they had to kind of disassemble that whole battery. you know, it really a battery swapping type of thing.But the big breakthrough and one that was completely unplanned was when you used the aluminum in this disk format, instead of having to use pure aluminum, which most aluminum-air batteries had to use, you could use dirty aluminum. And the reason that's important is that there's a parasitic reaction that creates hydrogen.And that's why everybody would go use pure aluminum, which of course drove the costs through the roof. It made it basically un-economic for most commercial purposes. But we didn't have any pure aluminum, so we started with dirty aluminum and we're like, shoot, we're getting numbers that you're not supposed to be able to get with aluminum air, right? With dirty aluminum. all of a we're like, boy, this is starting to look really good because now the cost of our feedstock is reasonable. It's waste.And so now we actually have an energy carrier that can be cost effective, clean, safe. This fuel doesn't explode. There's no thermal runaway issues. None of those safety issues. It's known technology. Prevalent. Aluminum's the most prevalent metal in the Earth's crust. It's everywhere. It's on every continent. It exists everywhere. We have scrap on every continent.already. Yeah, so that's what it is. We think it's really big, Mark. We think it's really, really big.Mark Hinaman (20:29)That's super cool. Yeah. What's the cathode material?Rob Alexander (20:34)Cathode, can't get real specific with you what we're doing, but no rare earths in it. use predominantly, and this is well known, use predominantly carbon in there and then you'll have catalysts. It's the catalysts where you get the reaction to happen, a three-part reaction that's gonna take that oxygen, get it into solution in the forms of ions on the other side.So yeah, don't disclose what we're using. That's part of our IP right now. Yeah, we've got a couple of sauces that are secret, yeah.Mark Hinaman (20:59)Secret sauce. Keep the secret sauce secret. Yeah,yeah, that's good. I'll say it back. So this parasitic process, I guess, removes or corrodes the aluminum from the disc or plate and moves it to the cathode, releases electrons during the corrosion process. You've got a sodium hydroxide bath.that you keep the whole system in. But then I guess air-gapped on one side that's bringing oxygen into the system, introducing oxygen. Super cool. ⁓ Can you share, I guess, some preliminary numbers for like what a disc might, how much energy might be released? I mean, like you're holding this, which is awesome. I love props and toys and like a record player, know, like aRob Alexander (21:27)Exactly.Yeah.Yeah.Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's basic. Yeah,yeah.Mark Hinaman (21:48)An inch or a centimeter thick record player.Rob Alexander (21:52)Yeah, so basicallythe simple way, is probably a kilogram. I'm sorry, I'm metric and in Canada, but so one kilogram, we're getting net in the first product out, we'll get two kilowatt hours of energy per one kilogram of aluminum. So this is basically two kilowatt hours of energy. And so when you look at that, how does that compare with gas or diesel?Pretty comparable, volume and mass. We're basically getting the same amount out that's usable. The advantage we have, that's just the electrical energy, so two kilowatt hours of electrical energy. If you can use the heat, there's some applications where you can use the heat. There's another three kilowatt hours of heat. So you start to think about...cogen opportunities, long-term, you come from petroleum industry, you understand all that stuff. So it's very, very comparable to a gas or a diesel and that's just our first product, our first demos are in that range. The theoretical max is to take that to four kilowatt hours per kilogram. I won't tell you how close we've gotten to that, but we've been pretty close.So you have a very viable, cost-effective energy carrier. I don't want to cast dispersions on hydrogen or anything else, but it's a good energy carrier. It's a really, really good energy carrier.Mark Hinaman (23:09)Well, I like that you use the termenergy carrier and not necessarily energy source, right? Like you still have to put energy into the aluminum to, mean, the milling, the separation from ore, the, mean, it goes and gets created into products and then you're taking it after it's already been refined and might have some impurities. I mean, you use the word dirty. I like that, but it's essentially there's, there are things there'sRob Alexander (23:13)Yeah.Mark Hinaman (23:36)contaminants that are not aluminum in the material and but that that's okay for you guys so but it's not necessarily an energy raw energy new energy source you got to put energy into the aluminum first but and that's why the term battery or energy carrier is a better description rightRob Alexander (23:40)Mm-hmm.Exactly,exactly. Yeah, it is a battery, 100%. And just to kind of push a little bit on what you said, Mark, and this may be getting ahead of where you wanted to be. you know, ultimately, yeah, like, so ultimately, and this is a little bit to our vision, like we're starting with scrap aluminum as our fuel. And there's a lot of it, I can get into all that. But ultimately,Mark Hinaman (24:04)It's okay. Yeah, we can bounce around.Rob Alexander (24:19)What's possible is to take the off product. I haven't told you talked about that. you consume the aluminum and then in your slurry is your aluminum trihydrate. Okay, that aluminum trihydrate we pull out in the form of a solid and can keep it in a slurry form.Today we sell that, it's a big market for that. We use it as a flocculant for wastewater treatment so we can, know, every municipality buys ATH and that's a great, you know, source of cash for us actually in the economics of the first product. But ultimately you could take that ATH, okay, and you can make it back into aluminum. Okay, so the way...Mark Hinaman (24:56)so you could recycle it. I guess that was going to beone of my questions was, are there consumables in this process? If so, what gets consumed and how does that impact the economics? And I guess for listeners, I understand the word flocculant and I can guess at the chemical makeup of aluminum trihydrate, but those might be pretty technical for folks.Rob Alexander (25:18)Yeah, we'llgo a little deeper on that. I mean, sorry to use big words. I didn't know what flocculant was until they told me because I'm not a chemist. essentially, the off product is aluminum trihydrate, is AlOH3.Mark Hinaman (25:21)Yeah, yeah, yeah.So.Rob Alexander (25:33)And ⁓ what a flocculant is doing in wastewater treatment is essentially it reacts with the solids in the wastewater and makes them heavier, which allows them to settle. And there's a couple of different options, but aluminum trihydrate is actually the biggest one used in that wastewater treatment zone. So what's cool, like when you think about the, you know, I get inspired by nature, I live in the woods, and what's cool about it is we're actually taking waste aluminum, okay,we're taking it back to its energy source, then the off product we're actually using to take human waste and kind of get it back to where it needs to be to clean water. Right? So it's kind of, you know, and to me it's all been sitting there in front of our faces as humans for the last 100, 200 years, but we didn't really notice it.that this was possible. This was a way that things could be wired cost effectively, right? Which is I think the key. It has to be cost effective. But yeah, back to your idea about, and you said it well, Mark.really the way we start with scrap, lots of scrap around the world, and that'll be our focus for the first 10 years probably. But ultimately our vision, and we've actually started another group called Gaia that I'll talk to you about, is that we would have a fuel-grade aluminum.So imagine the United States. Now you have this aluminum trihydrate being collected. You have your own smelters in the United States that might be using whatever energy is the cheapest and available, creating a fuel grade aluminum. Now fuel grade aluminum, when we make aluminum today for this aluminum on my iPhone, this is aluminum here. Yeah. Exactly.Mark Hinaman (27:07)for this little tea I'm drinking right?Rob Alexander (27:12)This has to be, when you smelt this, 99.7 % pure. Those impurities are really, really important.I need 88 % pure.Okay. Right, so now.Mark Hinaman (27:21)That's great. That's a greatthreshold to have, right? Like that's way easier than 99.Rob Alexander (27:28)It'sway easier. It's way easier.Mark Hinaman (27:30)It's kind of like school,right? It's way easier to get an 88 % on test than 99 % onRob Alexander (27:35)It is way easier to get an 88%. You can have a lot more fun getting an 88 than you can have getting a 99.7. I never saw a 99.7 so I can't really comment. So we think the way we're visiting, and we're not alone.Mark Hinaman (27:41)Yeah.Rob Alexander (27:51)We just started a group called the Global Aluminum Energy Alliance, GAIA. We're just going to launch in October in Boston. Started it with a company called Found Energy out of MIT in Boston.And they also can use scrap or dirty aluminum as a fuel. They take it to the heat. There's two reactions. You can either go towards electricity or you can go towards heat and hydrogen. And so we've come together and said, hey, let's consider this as an energy carrier. And we'll kick this thing off. And we think fuel-grade aluminum is a very viable energy carrier.probably doesn't replace fossil fuels everywhere but it certainly goes a long way to our mission at Aluma Power is to vanquish the internal combustion engine so we'll go a long way with fuel grade aluminum. On paper, I mean has to be proven out, on paper we can get lower costs per kilowatt hour than gas and diesel so that's when you win the game.Mark Hinaman (28:54)So where are you guys at in the process, Rob? Do you have a prototype energy system, or what do you envision at these batteries? mean, people hear batteries, they think like AA, AAA, car batteries, not necessarily. Maybe a Tesla power wall, maybe a bunch of cells pieced together, and then when I think internal combustion engine, I can see what a V8 and what a classic generator looks like with pistons and cylinders, but what do you envision the energy system looking like?Rob Alexander (29:08)Yeah.Mark Hinaman (29:23)Have you guys, yeah. Have you guys started building anything or?Rob Alexander (29:25)Yeah.Yeah. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So last year, they said it publicly. So I'll say it publicly. A company called Purelator, which is a courier company, primarily in Canada, launched our tech actually at a transit station, subway station in Toronto. And there what we were doing was we were, they deliverpackages, last mile delivery with e-cargo bikes, very cost effective. But they didn't have an energy, they wanted to locate, they have a container right at the subway station or at the transit station, middle of a parking lot, no electricity. Didn't want to use a diesel generator, noisy, wasn't going to be right. So they were doing battery swapping, hauling lithium iron phosphate battery back and forth. And we came in and said, hey, we'll make it, we'll put our generator beside this. we, you know, it's big and ugly at that point, the state of the tech.but proved it out and launched that. We got a big box and we did it and it went really, really well. And where we are right now is, I mean, could show you.Mark Hinaman (30:16)You got a big box, right? It sits in.Rob Alexander (30:25)go in here because it's also mostly vocal voice, but essentially we're launching, ⁓ we'll do six demos next year, 26, and picture just a 20-foot container that would have a bunch of our cells in it, and these cells, I showed you that disc, they're roughly the size, and these cells are turning inside the cells, or inside each one of these cells, and then there's lots of cells, there's 48 cells in a module that are producing the energy.⁓ And so that's where we are. It looks just like a 20-foot container with a bunch of things on the outside, but when you open up the modules, you would see these disks. And basically that disk that I showed you would run 20 hours, a constant high, ⁓ power. And then you would ⁓ exchange the disk and you'd be able to keep going. if you need 100, our primary focus is actually...backup power for critical infrastructure. So if you have an outage that's over 20 hours and you need to go 100 hours, like let's say, you know, big weather event that's three days long, no problem. You can refuel as you go and you can make sure you can handle that outage. And so that's what we're going to market with right now and huge, huge demand ⁓ for.Mark Hinaman (31:35)So how manykilowatt hours or megawatt hours fit in a shipping container?Rob Alexander (31:40)Yeah, our first in a 20 footer, this is a kind of a half shipping container. The first one will have peak power of about 100 kilowatts and 57 kilowatts of continuous. And then when we go to actual production launch, we'll be up at around 250 kilowatts of peak power and 135 ofof continuous. So you're now right, kind of right where the beginning of an internal combustion engine is in terms of power density, which is a really important thing. ⁓Mark Hinaman (32:16)So that's.So like 100 to 250 kilowatts of power, but how much energy is stored? Did you say 20 hours of energy?Rob Alexander (32:25)Well, then the energy is like,⁓ again, again, it's again, you got to think about it like in terms of a fuel, okay, unlimited. Okay. Now each one of these is 20 hours. So take your 135 continuous times 20 hours. That's how much you've got. can't do that math in my head very fast, what is that? 2.7 megs megawatts.Mark Hinaman (32:44)Yeah. So, I mean, you've got a 30 centimeterdisc in your hand ish, right? and so what, yeah.Rob Alexander (32:49)Yeah, and you've got, yeah, I've got a lot of these in there. Yeah,you've got, you can't work out, I forget the numbers in my head, but at 57, you've got over 400 of these in the machine. Okay, so let's do the 57 kilowatts. 57 kilowatts, it's gonna run 20 hours per disk, right? So what is that about omega? Just over a megawatt hour per disk exchange.Mark Hinaman (33:14)Okay, that was the number I was looking for. Yeah, megawatt hour per disk exchange. And I guess once the disk is corroded and used or moved to your CAD or CAD ion, do you have to move material out of the battery then or out of the shipping container?Rob Alexander (33:26)Yeah, that's it.So we have,if you're going to picture it, there's a 20 footer and then attached to that is basically electrolyte management system. And I won't go into it. There's two ways. There's a basic and an advanced system to do that. but essentially, if I think about the advanced, you then take that elect the aluminum trihydrate, you have to get it out of that solution. And once you get it out in the form of the slurry, the electrolyte can be reused. Okay.Now you're consuming some water in this chemical reaction. Your water is becoming, your H2O with your oxygen is becoming your ALOH3, if you do the kind of balance in the chemical equation. But your electrolyte doesn't get consumed. And so we have this other device, and depending on how big a footprint the customer wants to have, we can make it big and bulky and ugly, or we can make it smaller if they don't have a lot of space. And then what they do is you can suckit for what you want. So let's say the customer, like I was talking to customer Australia last night, you know they're like Rob we want that system to go that just the 20 hours we only want to deal with a 20-hour outage.And so then, you know, it's a smaller footprint. Essentially what you would do is whenever the disc exchange has to be done, there would be a fluid exchange. And that's where you would take the slurry, the aluminum trihydrate off, goes to the wastewater treatment. And you would add, you know, more water and get it ready for the next round. A little bit of the electrolyte as well gets lost in the ALT OH3. And so that's how you do it. And so it's a little bit.It's like a diesel generator, instead of, you know, to think it through, diesel generator, you put the diesel in, right, and you get the energy out and then we exhaust the off product to the atmosphere, right? For us, you put a solid aluminum in and then the off product is this aluminum trihydrate.And if you do the, I could show you the graph, but essentially it's similar kind of mass balances, a little bit more for us in terms of the output, but it's in this slurry form that then could be used as a wastewater treatment.Mark Hinaman (35:33)Gotcha. So aluminum trihydrate is the product of the chemical reaction. And I assume there's just as much of that as aluminum you're putting in, or just, like you said, material balance a little bit more. So, but that's benign. Okay.Rob Alexander (35:47)Yeah, two times, yeah, so it's actually two times. So for every tonof aluminum, you get two tons of aluminum trihydrate. And the reason is because you absorb those OHs from the water and the oxygen.Mark Hinaman (36:00)I assume that's benign and can just be disposed of in landfill or?Rob Alexander (36:04)No, so that's got value. So that aluminum trihydrate sells for about $400 a ton. And so a big part of, significant part of how this, the flocculant exactly.Mark Hinaman (36:07)Okay.This is the flocculant for wastewater treatment. saying we're not only generatingelectricity, we're also generating a commodity that can be used for wastewater treatment. I was just thinking, if you generate too much, if your aluminum batteries really take off and you're generating a lot of aluminum trihydrate, you could flood that market, but that'd be a great problem to have then, right?Rob Alexander (36:22)Exactly.Yeah, it's about an $8Bn market. I think we'll be okay for the first 10 years or so. we use a lot of ATH and remember the ATH ultimately is, you know, if you can get it to smelter grade, you're making aluminum again and that's an even bigger industry. It's also used for fire retardants in wires. It's used to make ceramics. You can make eco-cements out of it as cementitious material.Mark Hinaman (36:39)Yeah.Rob Alexander (37:06)It's got a lot of uses.Mark Hinaman (37:06)I love theapproach of byproducts are valuable. I mean, this is like the carbon capture sequestration industry that is using CO2 to flood and have enhanced CO2 recovery for oil fields. It's like, product, our waste is actually a product. How much water is, I guess you have to input then?Rob Alexander (37:25)Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.⁓ Ishould know that off the top of my head, Mark, but I don't. I apologize, I should have that in my head. ⁓ But it's not a huge amount of water. mean, like if you do the chemical balance, it's not a huge amount. For example, we have a customer in the...Mark Hinaman (37:37)It's okay, it's okay.So.Rob Alexander (37:48)big part of our focus and where the demand's coming from right now is in data centers and specifically ⁓ backup power for these AI data centers. And so as we've been kind of engineering this system for them, know, their condensate from their cooling process, okay, the water they're sucking out of the air is enough to run our power system that keeps the whole data center going. So it's not a lot.Mark Hinaman (37:56)Yeah. Yeah.Gotcha.Rob Alexander (38:13)but it'ssignificant. mean, these data centers are huge, so it's still a lot of water, but they're doing a lot of condensation. Yeah, and we're not alone. Like the way you're thinking about this whole system, honestly, when I've been talking to a bunch of the hyperscalers, and that's the way they think too, right? You have to when you're talking to this scale. You have to think about every one of the products. Make use of it.Mark Hinaman (38:20)What a great synergy, right?Yeah. So,did I hear this correctly then? A megawatt hour per shipping container per fuel load? I used air quotes there, but...Rob Alexander (38:47)Yeah, if I did mymath right in my head, which is dangerous, yeah, about megawatt per disk exchange. Yeah, for the first one. And the next one will be much higher than that. It will be closer to a couple of megawatt hours of energy per 20 foot ⁓ container.Mark Hinaman (39:02)Okay. So if you hada 10 megawatt hour or 10 megawatt data center, you could have 10 of these containers on site. I might think about that and have an hour of energy storage. Yeah.Rob Alexander (39:11)Yeah, what yeah, let me think you got to think about power versus yeah power versus duration, right? So think about therated power. So if you had a 10 megawattAnd I'll go with the actual production version. You're getting a hundred and you needed 10 megawatt continuous mark. Okay. So 10 megawatts we will continuous. We'll be putting out 135 kilowatts or whatever 10 megawatts divided by 135 will tell you the number of 20 foot containers we would do. But what's nice about this is because we don't have any of the thermal runaway issues of lithium and these can be stacked.Mark Hinaman (39:21)Yeah, I guess, yeah. ⁓Rob Alexander (39:48)It's a very modular system, right? We can go vertical, right? that's, I don't want to go too far into what we're thinking about there and what we're doing. We haven't got all that filed in the pads. yeah. It's, start thinking about automated warehousing and you'll start to think about where it's all going.Mark Hinaman (39:58)gonna say how do you reload discs on the fourth flare up likeYeah.Rob Alexander (40:08)that technology is available to do disk exchange. And so that's really where we're going is this can all be automated.Now you've got a very high power backup power system with zero emissions. And it's dispatchable. You can turn it on whenever you need it. In grids right now, that's a huge, huge issue as we adopt things like solar and wind, which are very, very cost effective, but we need dispatchable power when we need it. And we need it, I always think about it like a tree.Mark Hinaman (40:24)Yeah.Rob Alexander (40:45)we need it at the leaves of the tree where the solar is. We don't need it at the trunk, right? Because if we put it at the trunk, we have to rebuild our whole network. So that'sMark Hinaman (40:49)Yep.Yeah. How, I guess, is the 20 foot shipping container kind of like the optimal size or would you envision making these smaller or even more energy dense? Like, I mean, you diesel generator sometimes, and I guess that that doesn't necessarily mean that a diesel engine in a vehicle, or maybe it does. Like would this be in a vehicle eventually or?Rob Alexander (41:07)Yeah, the way we're thinking about...believe it will be actually. But let me talk about it a little bit. It's technology adoption. So we've chosen stationary power as the first stop. Partially, honestly, because it's easier. It's easier and there's a huge need, right? There's a huge need right now with these AI data centers and backup in particular. But the whole thing, it's actually an immersive, the fluid is encapsulated.Mark Hinaman (41:28)Makes sense. It's easier. Yeah. No moving parts. ⁓Rob Alexander (41:42)And so it absolutely, it can go mobile. Absolutely can. And so the thinking is we get up to the millions of cells with this application, get down the cost curve. we get the cut, you know, the actual machine, what we call the galvanic generator is primarily an injection molded plastics machine. Okay. It's not high heats in this thing. So we don't have to spend, you know, the same amount of money that internal combustion engine to make metals because we can do this out of plastics.which is really nice because it helps your costs. Like I'm an ex-automotive guy, injection molding is fantastic process and it can be very cost effective, scales really, really well. So once we get the cell cost down, which won't be difficult ⁓ over this next three years, now you can use those cells wherever, right? And as long as you have the power density, now you can go into mobile applications. So yeah, that is whatultimately will happen is these will be adopted. If you take that automotive example that you were just saying, we see ourselves as the energy density solution. We think rechargeables like lithium ion, lithium ion phosphate are the power density piece of the equation. So lithium ion fantastic for dumping electrons quickly.Right? It can deal with all your transients, you know, but kind of sucks when it comes to range. And we'll get better on range, but when you think about it from a cost for range, it's pretty darn expensive, right? Cost per range, cost per kilowatt is all right, but kilowatt hours, it's not so good. We're the opposite.we've got to arrange our cost per kilowatt hours infinitesimal because of the refueling, right? So if you put these two together, now you can make the rechargeable system smaller, lighter, right? And we provide the longevity and the fuel. So we call it the all electric hybrid.Mark Hinaman (43:34)You heard it here first,Fire Deficient Podcast. The two hybrid systems, two battery, different types of battery, hybrid vehicle. I'd never considered that, Rob. That's really cool. I'm sure you've told other people, I heard it here first on the podcast. That's crazy, yeah.Rob Alexander (43:38)HeheheheYeah, yeah, all electric hybrid.It's the all electric hybrid. And okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's not the first time.Yeah. And I want to like just to kind of add onto that where it really starts to sing is, you know, is in marine. So in marine, remember, like, well, not remember, a huge part of our...A huge part of our weight and system is actually the weight of that electrolyte because it's water, right? It's an aqueous solution. But marine, wonderful. You're sitting on a bunch of salt or fresh water. Both work for us. So now, it works really well.Mark Hinaman (44:25)I was gonna ask, yeah, salt water still works? I you've got your electrolyte built inif your electrolyte's salt, but yeah.Rob Alexander (44:30)Exactly,yeah you're right Mark. So now I'm leaving the dock or I'm leaving the pier. I don't have any of that electrolyte weight. We've already created a unit that makes the electrolyte on board from a solid and so now you've got something that's know, I'm gonna, don't quote me, I'm gonna guess it's gonna be about five times the energy density of lithium ion. SoNow we actually have a new power source for a marine that works. Right now, lithium ion batteries, it's tough. Tough to get. I'm a water skier. I'd love to buy an electric boat, with lithium ion, it's just not going to happen that I get my electric boat anytime soon.Mark Hinaman (45:17)Yeah, but you think with this hybrid system you could.Rob Alexander (45:20)That's my dream.I want to be pulled. I want to be pulled before I go to my grave by one of these all-electric hybrids.Mark Hinaman (45:25)with no exhaust, right? It's mostly, yeah,for the health of water skiers, we need to have hybrid boats. That's awesome, Rob. So, well, we talked a lot about the tech, because, I mean, it's interesting and it's different and very different, innovative. What's the business look like now? I mean, you mentioned that you're mad scientist that came up with this.Rob Alexander (45:31)HeheheheheMark Hinaman (45:47)tech guy co-founder and yourself, you've been with the company since 2020. How big's the team? You've done one prototype. What's the go-to-market strategy? Where are you guys at in that process? Fundraising? Talk to us about the business side.Rob Alexander (45:59)Yeah, yeah, yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah. So, a team, roughly 50 people at this point, fundraising, just finishing off a Series A fundraiser we have raised on that round, probably just over 14 million US, lots of government funding.We're going to launch six demos next year in 26. We've probably sold three of them so far. So we're just talking to other customers about those demos. And they will be primarily focused on backup power for critical infrastructure, data centers and utilities.One of the customers is going to use it for an EV charging, a flexible EV charging system, which is fine, that works. And that's where we are. And so we've got, we're really just focused on, we just did our Alpha 1 release, which is the first design freeze two weeks ago. And...Mark Hinaman (46:56)Alpha 1, thata product name or?Rob Alexander (46:59)Yeah, it's a prototype name like it's so in automotive, we use that what's called the ⁓ APQP process, Advanced Product Quality Planning process. And that's your first build of something that's ⁓ production intent. And, and so those will be available. And then we just go through cycles, you know, hopefully, four total of four cycles to get to the actual big product launch using an injection molded tools as well.So we're really, you know, we've been part of a number of different accelerators around the world.And one of them was called Free Electrons. Free Electrons is seven different utilities from around the world that want to figure, we're trying to figure out how to adopt new tech quickly. And they created this accelerator where they go through a rating process. We were selected out of 800 into the top 30 globally. And out of that has coming some POs now, purchase orders to do some demonstrations for these utilities.demonstrate the technology and then the idea is that we demonstrate with one or two of those utilities and then those utilities can then adopt it in their local markets.So we're in negotiations right now with a few of them to do those first demos. So that'll be how the utilities adopt it. But the other really big demand is from the data center side. Hyperscalers are all coming to kick the tires in September. the hyperscalers, I'm sure you talked about it on your show, the demand for these AI data centers is just huge.But how do you build up power? And the fastest way to power is solar and wind. there's, can't, the turbines, there's not enough turbines. You know, we're already five years lead time now on natural gas turbines. So the fastest by far now is solar and wind. But the solar and wind comes with this huge issue around what happens for when you're out of either sun or wind for three days. Okay.go to would be a diesel generator. Diesel generators, you won't get air permitting for beyond about 24 hours in all the states, United States. Okay, so it doesn't work. And that's where we come in. So that's really what they're looking at it. That's for right now.And that'll be honestly, like if those hit, even some portion of those hit, we're busy as heck for the next five years just building out a lot of, ⁓ building a lot of these systems.Mark Hinaman (49:27)So what's your,I mean, it sounds like, alpha one frozen design ready for production. What's your timeline to deployment? And you said purchase orders, like you're going do some prototype test sites or, yeah, me the timeline, pilots for, yeah.Rob Alexander (49:40)Yeah, pilots or demos, yeah,those will be, and they'll be Q3 and Q4 of 26. We'll do a bunch of these demos, we'll get the feedback, there'll be problems with them. We'll work with these customers and then whatever those, whoever those customers are that kind of take a risk with us and work with us on those demos, they get first dibs on the production version, which will launch in the second half of 27. And that's where we'll ramp up and.27, 28 go to build out. There'll probably be one more design iteration I'd guess in there by 28. then it's pretty big, it goes pretty big, pretty fast, assuming that some of these things, because they're talking big numbers, they want a lot of power. So at the same time, we've had to...Mark Hinaman (50:20)Yeah. Yeah. I said 10 megawattsand that was like the smallest data center that I think Tomcast has a six megawatt data center outside of Denver that is like, cute, right? Like, but these other ones are.Rob Alexander (50:25)Exactly. They want Giga.Yeah, Yeah, yeah, they arecute. Yeah, like really, what they really want is a module would be about 2.7 megawatts. That's kind of the first piece. And that's where we're aiming. We are aiming to go to gigawatts scale. And so you've got to, we're developing the ability to make the galvanic generator at that scale. As I said, it's ejection molded. You could see your way through to making that. A lot of those things exist. The other piece of the equation is we've got to get the fuel supply, right?So I can't say publicly that we knew of aluminum. But we just did a JDA with, I can't say their name because I'm under NDA, but one of the biggest in the world. And the good news is there's a lot of scrap in the United States. And so we're with one of the largest scrap collectors that's joint venture with this other company. And so.Mark Hinaman (50:58)You actually need some aluminum.Rob Alexander (51:16)to kind of put this thought in your mind, you know, we're talking in the United States about energy security and everything else, kind of quick, quick numbers. Today, the United States is selling a huge amount of scrap to China. Okay. And so if we diverted a quarter of that scrap and instead used it for backup power,in the United States, that would be enough to power 10 of these gigawatt size facilities in the United States. And so that's our vision. Instead of sending this offshore, we want energy security in the United States. It exists here already. It's all these primarily scrapped automotive vehicles.that have been chewed up and mixed metals. We can now use that as our backup power married together with solar or wind or it could be natural gas or it could be small nukes. It could be a bunch of different things. We're agnostic to the energy source, is cost effective.Mark Hinaman (52:14)Yeah, the story works, sounds good with solar and wind, but applicable to everything, right?Rob Alexander (52:21)Yeah, it is applicable to everything. Like a lot of times, one of the things people really like, it's another kind of thing I never thought about, but what's cool about our tech is it's cellular. so, you know, if you think about a natural gas turbine, they're big, they're wonderful, but if it goes down, you're...you're out for like four months, right? So where is with ours, because it's cellular, like at a gigawatt, we'll have millions of these cells. Well, what if like 5 % of them don't work? No big deal.You can still provide the power. We probably size it at 1.25 or something. So it's a little bit like the way they work these data centers. They have redundancies and they have extras and they work around all the problems automatically. That's the kind of energy source we have here. And not unlike lithium ion batteries, they can do some of that as well. So it makes for a more resilient energy base in many ways.Mark Hinaman (53:19)awesome.Rob, what's the world look like in five, ten, fifteen years for you guys? I mean, you've got millions of these things built and you're making, starting to recycle them. I mean, yeah. Give me the vision.Rob Alexander (53:33)I I started kind of with our ultimate mission is to vanquish the internal combustion engine. so, you know, it takes a while to vanquish something that's been around for 140 years. But, you know, 10, 15 years, what I would hope to see is in terms of the backup power and critical infrastructure and the use of scrap, that is well developed and going well.I would really love to see a fuel grade aluminum being smelted in the United States and Canada and around the world. And that that's beginning to take off as a ⁓ very formidable energy carrier globally with us and with other technologies that can use a fuel grade aluminum.And but I think it's a very diverse energy landscape. I don't think there's one size fits all one tech that fits all. I think, you know, we have wonderful technologies like Jeff took really old technology and put it together with new technologies. And the good news is we keep inventing new technology. So I think as humans, what we have to do is we have to realize we have all these wonderful tools. How do we put these off these things all together to get a very,low impact energy system, but one that's cost effective, that one that can be shared around the world.And energy, you you focused on it in your show, Mark, which is great. Like there's such a huge correlation between energy usage and costs and economic growth and health, right? Like the two go together, right? It's a perfect correlation. So to me, you know, I've made lots of money in business. It's a little bit the reason why I'm here after dangling on that rope that I talked about at the very beginning, like what are you going to do with your life? This is about, you know, let's leave it a little bit better.and try and leave it a little bit better and take some of these capabilities that we have with AI now and think it all the way through. Think away all the circles like you talked about, thinking about the waste product. And honestly, one of my inspirations, I'm a Christian guy and I think a lot of this is faith-based for me, but it's also just look at nature, how nature works. Nature never has a byproduct they don't use again, ever. ⁓I live in a forest, every tree falls down, turns into dirt, makes another tree. That's the way we have to think in that whole cycle. So that's the world. And I think as humans, you know, it's hard, can get, pessimistic when you look at the news and wars and all these other different things. But to me, I'm very positive. We have the abilities to build something that's good for the world and good for those in need as well.That's my vision. ⁓Mark Hinaman (56:15)awesome. love it. That's a great place to leave it. So Rob Alexander, thanks so much for chatting with me. Excited for you guys. Excited to see where you go.Rob Alexander (56:21)Yeah.Thanks a lot for the opportunity, Mark. Appreciate it.