Aquapulser Engineering is honored to be named a semifinalist in this year’s Cleantech Open. It’s the world’s largest cleantech business competition. Its mission is to find, fund and foster entrepreneurs with big ideas that address today’s most urgent energy, environmental and economic challenges.
Aquapulser sees this as a tremendous opportunity to effect widespread recognition of its technology and hone its business acumen. Clean technology is here to stay and the Clean Tech Open is the premier organization trying to single handedly make it all happen.
Leading up to the event, we got some brief air time on King 5 News: http://www.king5.com/on-tv/KING-5-Morning-News-tech-report-an-all-Seattle-start-up-edition-78997467.html (watch around -1:30).
The numerous last minute changes and adding the NASCAR MSD 6TN CDI box to the demo rig paid off and we convinced the judges (consisting of VCs, Angels and the like and some press) that Aquapulser Engineering was indeed the most exciting startup in the NW region this year! The presentation was very well received and seemingly people were very interested in this. And why wouldn’t they!? The blue high energy plasma sparks flying off the tungsten electrodes were only the coolest thing they had seen since….I dunno – the iPhone??
We left with this:
The MIT Enterprise Forum NW hosts the Northwest Startup DEMO – Fall 2009. For the very first time, this event is in partnership with all six of the angel organizations in the pacific NW area, including Alliance of Angels, Keiretsu Forum, Puget Sound Venture Club, Seraph Capital Forum, Tacoma Angel Network and Zino Society.
The DEMO event finalists who have made it through a rigorous screening process, will be demonstrating their exciting new products and services, and sharing how they created them on December 10th.
This fall’s finalists are:
- Aquapulser Engineering: Offers an add-on ignition module that converts weak sparks into a high-current plasma
- Basic Athletic Measurement: Builds the world’s first athletic testing platform to drive consistency, reliability, and validity into global athletic performance measurements and ratings
- Exponential Entertainment: Provides HollywoodPlayer™, a multi-platform games service for users to discover, share, and play with real scenes from Hollywood movies
- Limeade: Supplies cross-platform mobile and social wellness tools
- Pharaoh Software: Develops a system which controls Windows applications through a UI to provide automated technical support
- Zooppa: The world’s largest source of user-generated advertising
Excitement abounds! Here is a picture of the demo rig we used to present and subsequently blow the judges’ minds:
High energy plasma ignition including the RPG 4700 plasma ignition module in its current form is the ideal solution for the global auto industry and for engine makers of all sizes and fuel types, as it is low cost, allowing manufacturers to meet stringent emission standards, increase fuel efficiency and improve performance with results that cannot be matched by current state of the art aftermarket ignition systems such as Multiple Spark Discharge.
Indeed no other technology shows promise for solving the fuel economy with reduced emissions problem in such a low cost manner. And best of all, this technology is here today and available in the market! The Obama administration has mandated that by the year 2016, all auto manufacturers achieve an average fuel economy to 35.5 MPG (42 mpg for cars and 26 mpg for light trucks) for their product lineup or pay penalties. The current penalty for not meeting CAFE standards are $5.50 per tenth of a mile per gallon for each tenth (1/10) under the target value times the total volume of those vehicles manufactured for a given model year. Needless to say auto manufacturers are trying to fight this arguing that it will cost them tens millions of dollars in R and D costs over the next few years and a failure to acheive targets will result in more millions in fines.
