About Us

George Gogos

CEO and Managing Director

Academic Degrees – Mechanical Engineering:
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Ph.D., 1986 University of Pennsylvania
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M.S., 1982 University of Pennsylvania
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B.S., 1980 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

40 plus years of research in heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and combustion science, including:

  • Flame weeding equipment design and development
  • Vaporizing and combusting sprays
  • Flow & heat transfer using functionalized metallic surfaces

Chris Bruening

Director, Engineering

Academic Degrees – Mechanical Engineering:
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Ph.D., 2017 University of Nebraska–Lincoln
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M.S., 2009 University of Nebraska–Lincoln
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B.S., 2006 University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Raised on a small Nebraska farm. A combined 12 plus years of research in flame weeding and flame weeding equipment design and development.

Lanny Nissen

Director, Manufacturing

Academic Degree:
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B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Nebraska

Native of Nebraska farm and certified propane technician. Over 40 years of experience in product development and managing manufacturing including: plant operations, procurement, inventory, quality, safety, customer relations, and environmental regulations.

Vision:

Revolutionize flame weeding equipment and techniques for weed and pest control.

Mission:

Provide safe and efficient flaming equipment that yields higher quality treatments.

Agricultural Flaming Innovations (AFI) is an equipment research, development, and manufacturing company that is helping to solve the biggest problem for farmers: weeds. The collaboration between engineers and weed scientists allows the AFI team to offer farmers a highly innovative product with key innovations that U.S. competitors have failed to bring to the market. AFI’s equipment provides weed control in numerous agronomic crops like corn, soybean, sunflower and sorghum.

The Proof:

AFI has addressed the issues with flaming through the key innovations of hood technology (patent pending), efficient vaporizer/torch unit (patent pending), an electronic ignition and flame detection system (patent pending), and treatment recipes for individual crops (patent pending). These innovations offer farmers four major improvements in flame weeding equipment: increased safety (#1 top priority), increased energy efficiency, higher quality weed control, especially in windy conditions, and improved ease of use. In collaboration with the University of Nebraska, AFI has also made significant contributions to flaming treatment knowledge. Testing has shown that the AFI flamer can significantly improve weed control levels, and in some cases, even eliminate the need for hand weeding. These results offer organic producers reduced expenses through lower weed control costs and increased crop revenue through higher yields. The flaming treatments cost from $5-20/acre, and even more important, it can effectively treat weeds that grow within the crop row, which are typically more difficult to control through cultivation. As a result, using AFI flame weeders can increase crop revenue by as much as $450 per acre through increased yields (compared to revenues and yields obtained through cultivation alone).