Innovative and Renewable Energy Technology from Acme Basic Industries

For Immediate Release

With all the political turmoil around the Mideast and North Africa, attention is turned once again to the ever increasing societal and environmental costs of petroleum-based fuel.  Alternative energy solutions, including solar, wind, hydro/tidal, and geothermal, are pushing forward toward sustainable and profitable futures.  Though still in development stage, other bold technologies like biofuels from algae, soybeans, and rapeseed, are poised for fast track commercialization.

Our new company, Acme Basic Industries, is dedicated to discovering, developing, launching, and expanding a third generation of alternative energies based on the conversion and recovery of kinetic and mechanical energies incidental to every day processes and operations.

While Acme’s first technology platform, WalkingWatts™ is yet to find practical application, the concept of recovering energy from human and animal footsteps continues to show promise, as we acknowledge how the costs of spring-loaded sidewalks, mall hallways, and dance floors, is currently prohibitive.  Yet looking forward, our research department notes how, as gasoline prices increase, people will walk more.  At the same time, as food prices increase in parallel, people are forced to move to starchier diets, adding on the pounds.  Indeed, when fat people walk more, our economics trend toward breakeven and eventually to profits.   So Acme continues to press forward with WalkingWatts™.

Variations on WalkingWatts™ technologies include:

• ·         Systems to recover energy from kids playing in bounce houses.
• ·         Golf balls with built-in load cells and batteries which convert and collect electricity that can be transferred to your cart batteries.  The higher the score, the more energy collected.

But one dramatic variation shows real and immediate potential.  Acme’s IMPACT™ technology applies piezoelectric technology[i] in a system that might revolutionize the automobile and trucking industries.

Piezoelectric power is ubiquitous as applied in stereo speakers, microphones, computer cooling fans, and for the igniters used in your home barbeque gas grills (ha, bet you didn’t know what that snapping sound was).  The Piezoelectric Effect was discovered by France’s Pierre Curie, perhaps best known for using his wife Marie as a bedside lamp.

In the past, piezoelectric effects were only associated the inorganic crystals.  But today there exist a host of materials, including synthetic ceramics and carbon-based polymers, like polyvinylidene fluoride, that have the ability to convert mechanical energy to electric power.  The electronics needed to collect and rectify the current produced would be less complicated than a ‘Mr. Microphone.’[ii]

But armed with the knowledge that piezoelectric materials can convert electrical to mechanical power, and vice versa, we have conceived a system where mechanical impacts on piezoelectric surfaces are used to generate propulsive power for vehicles.  

Briefly, our system converts the mechanical energy from the impact of insects on the windshields and leading surfaces of moving vehicles into electric power to drive, or at least to supplement power in a new generation of hybrid automobiles and trucks.  Many of the materials mentioned above might be suitable for windshield fabrication as a unitary molded, transparent plastic or as an outside layer of a more complex composite.

Obviously the complete power plant should be hybrid:  it will take auxiliary power produced either by internal combustion or stored in batteries, to attain velocities needed to keep insects from avoiding collision and to achieve maximum conversion efficiencies, possible only when insects are completely squashed.  Glancing impacts allow energy to escape.

Considerable science is behind our invention as well as years of careful observation of the results of what seemed before to be only annoying, distracting, and somewhat random events.  Keep in mind that such transformations of empirical to theoretical science to applied technology are historically notable from Darwin to Lysenko, Newton[iii] to Velikovsky.[iv]

If one considers the variety and total extent of energy available from insect collisions, the mind is boggled.  In terms of relativistic mass-energy equivalence,[v] a small insect totally converted (E=mc²)  would supply enough energy to run a small car for 100 years.  This is, of course, an extreme case since the combined velocities of the insect and car would need to approach 300,000 kilometers/second.  No insects and few vehicles (other than unmuffled pickup trucks racing past my house nightly between midnight and 4 AM) have been reported to achieve these velocities.

But all is not lost:  it never is.  Please reference Newton’s Second Law.  Rather than exploit the nuclear energy potential in the system, current research supports a more immediate and practical application.

Mason, in his ‘50s classic paper, opines that operating at piezoelectric resonances (10-100 kilocycles), 5-10 watts of power might be generated from exposed piezoelectric materials.  The maximum energy potential of such a system can be calculated based on Mason’s formulae.

As always, there are deficiencies and unpredictabilities in breakthrough technologies.  But with only a moment’s consideration (please, not more than a moment), many advantages can be appreciated.  It will also be noted below how well IMPACT™ might complement existing and other new, innovative energy systems.

The bad news first.  Among IMPACT’s™ limitations and disadvantages:  (1) limited utility in northern winters when insect populations are limited by cold weather.  However we have been working on the idea that snowflakes and even raindrops might be viable substitutes for june bugs and gnats. (2) It will be necessary to stop the vehicle frequently to clean off unconverted residue or ‘flyass.’  As flyass accumulates on forward surfaces, the elastic properties of the flyass absorb and dampens impacts, decreasing conversion efficiencies.  (3) An electrical buffer system will be needed in IMPACT™ powered vehicles, required in the event of vigorous collisions on piezo-active surfaces with, for example, gravel, birds, or bicyclists.  Without a buffer, the resulting power surge from such a collision might result in over-acceleration and control loss.  If the buffer is sufficiently large and robust, the energy spike would not be wasted but rather would be available later during periods of low insect activity.

Advantages:  (1) IMPACT™ manifests its greatest benefit in summer months when both travel and insects are at peak levels.  What had been considered an inconvenience during summer travel turns into a boon to the economy in general.  (2) A further savings in oil resources is achieved when we stop spraying expensive, petroleum-based insecticides indiscriminately.  The environmental lobby will be pleased with this example of natural, non-invasive, renewable technology.  The flyass residues are, of course, bio-degradable and non-persistent, and indeed, our firm has been issued patents related to specific applications for the reuse and recycle of residues.[vi]  (3) IMPACT™ gives western societies a significant advantage over our Middle Eastern brethren.  Someday oil will be gone and transport in the bug-less expanses of the desert will be very costly.  Meanwhile certain regions of the United States, notably South Texas and Louisiana, could become major exporters of mosquitoes, grasshoppers, and fornicating flies.  As previously noted, this resource is renewable!

Intuitively, an IMPACT™ system might augment hydrocarbon fuels for jet aircraft, however we calculate how, even with speeds in excess of 550 miles per hour, in order to justify new installations or retrofits, aircraft so equipped would be limited to altitudes below 77 feet.

Looking ahead to an even brighter future, we envision a time when IMPACT™ systems help create a virtual combustion-free economy.  As green-house effect and global warming take hold, we foresee a world not unlike earth’s Pre-Cambrian Era when insects were as big as housecats.  Random collisions with even slow moving bugs of this size would generate energy sufficient to allow acceleration at least as great as achieved today by this author’s Hoveround™.

While we at Acme Basic understand how current economic conditions hardly warrant construction of a prototype IMPACT™ powered vehicle by US automakers, we sincerely hope our government, particularly DARPA and our military procurement agencies, will neither overlook nor underestimate the potential of this promising invention.

Licensing or outright purchase of this innovative and futuristic technology is available, limited only by export restrictions.

For further information, please contact Joy Todaworld in Investor Relations at (212) 555-1324.

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[i] Cady, W. G. Piezoelectricity: An Introduction to the Theory and Applications of Electromechanical Phenomena in Crystals, New rev. ed., 2 vols. (1964)

[ii] Ronco, Inc.  MSRP $25.00

[iii] “I’m Just Glad it Wasn’t a Freakin’ Pumpkin,” Sir Isaac Newton (1721)

[iv] “Worlds in Collision,” I. Velikovsky (1950)

[v] “God Doesn’t Play Dice, But I Have Seen Him at the Blackjack Table,” Albert Einstein (1949)

[vi] USP 4,333,421 “The Conversion of Crushed Insect Residue for Tasty Artificial Crab Dip and Anchovy Paste” Assigned to Acme Basic, Inc., Clute, Texas.  Issued 10/2/2008.