 This is Think Tech Hawaii, the community matters here. Good afternoon, Howard Wig, Code Green, Think Tech Hawaii on this Martin Luther King Day. And human beings aren't the only entity that is getting liberated and rising in this world. So are so-called waste products. And do we have a recycling reuse, make use of everything kind of story for you today, which has implications for the growth of the Hawaiian economy and we're not talking more tourism. We're talking making better use of what we have, gives me great pleasure to introduce George Pritchard, manager of CH4 agriculture and Steve Joseph, vice president, research I believe of DVT landfill. Now many years ago in a previous life in the energy office, I got put in charge of promoting recycling because that's resource efficiency, which is a component of energy efficiency, and at that time, well, you were probably still in the sandbox and you may have been in junior high, this is quite a while ago, the Hawaii recycled 8% of all of its waste product, and I think that was exclusively old junk cars. We started the Hawaii Recycling Association and moved up and up and up and up and each power got built, great recycler, and last time I looked we were up around 78% of all the recyclables that were getting processed, and what's our greatest export? Used to be sugar, used to be pine, now it's scrap metal because of all of our efforts. However, we did not consider that certain things were unrecyclable and just lost and forgotten, no more, thanks to Steve Joseph PVT landfill. Why don't you kick us off, Steve, by telling me what PVT landfill does and then you can segue into Georgia's. Yeah, PVT, we're the largest recycler on the island. We did 187,000 tons last year, and out of that about 45,000 of that is wood. So we take all the construction demolition debris that comes in, anything that comes from construction, and we recycle it, so we go through, we redo, we crush the concrete, reuse it, pull the metal out, pull the wire out, and have a wood product that comes out that is suitable, we call it a feedstock, it's suitable for use for either gasification or anaerobic digestion. There's a number of uses, so it can provide power to the islands, and that's that much less oil or fuel we have to buy. And that much less landfill space we're taking up. Exactly, so the landfill lasts a lot longer, we only put things in it that really have to go in it because there's no way to recycle it. So what we're doing though with all the wood that's coming out, and we're part of the Hawaii Bioeconomy Trade Organization, which includes PAR, Grace Pacific, the gas company, we're all trying to make a greener economy over here and import a lot less fuel and not import gas. So we have the next slide. This is what happens, we run the wood down and we pick out the concrete, we pick out the wood, we pick out the metal. Now the wood is probably about 50 or 60% by bulk of all the waste in a construction demolition bin. I'm glad those guys are wearing gloves. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The next slide there. So this is the finished product that is our feedstock that goes out. This is about the size of it is four inch minus grind. So this is suitable either for gasification or guys like the gas company are looking at anaerobic digestion for it. Can you export to the gas company and can they process this too? Well they're looking at guys like George that can come in with anaerobic digesters, digest it, produce methane, which then they can produce and send out in the gas pipeline. So they're going to equate it with George. Oh yeah. George and I have been working on this for a couple of years now and I'm really excited about what George does with this because our wood would be the base and then the material that he's working on growing mixes with the wood and that makes it really suitable for anaerobic digestion. Now the word anaerobic sounds like the opposite of aerobic and aerobic means you're using oxygen and other air gases to process something but you're not doing that. Nope this one would be you're right exactly the opposite. It's an anaerobic digestion without air and that produces methane gas. How does it digest if it doesn't we associate oxygen with the digestion of everything? Yeah well yeah that actually happens in almost all landfills there's no oxygen so you end up with anaerobic digestion which gives you methane that's why you see a lot of the landfills have either flares where they're actually producing power. They did that on the Kailua landfill for years they produced power out of it. The thing about the gulch is that most of the material that would break down has already gone to H-power to produce power so they don't have enough to really make it a viable kind of project. And when you say the gulch you're referring to Waimanolo gulch the city's landfill. And that is not in the community of Waimanolo that is. Well for on the west side Gapalai. Just as you're turning the curve to go onto the Waianae coast there's the mountainous area and it's up there. And it's up there but if you take a look at the next slide this is all of our wood that is in there this is what the stockpile this is probably about a day's worth of wood sitting there. So it really moving all of this out of the landfill and converting it to power like Howard had said earlier really keeps the landfill space available and really makes it a better way to do it with a recycle end of it. And the most important thing is the ability to produce power and not import fuel from the mainland. Now why did in that slide the wood was arranged in windrows or at least one windrow? Why is that? If you leave it for very long you have to leave it in windrows and then about turn it about every two weeks just to make sure that it doesn't ignite all on its own. It's called spontaneous combustion so anytime you're doing that kind of process you have to keep turning it. That's until he gets it now he wants it to go anaerobic. Now in the windrow state does it need any water because there's not a whole heck of a lot of water out in that part of the island? No we don't want to have any water on it because we don't want to start the process of digestion. The process of digestion needs to happen at George's facility. So if you take a look at the next slide this is you remember the one with all the wood chips. Here it is and I'll let George take it from here but literally he's adding green material to it. Well thanks Steve and Aloha folks for having us on and and it's a great pleasure to be here. You know CH4 Ag is a local Hawaii based company that is basically developing renewable energy projects specifically facilities that will produce a biogas and when we say that bio phrase term is we're really looking at ways to produce a gas for means that are other than a fossil fuel means and by that we're looking at organic material which is material any material that will basically decay and rot which is like the PVT wastewood it's definitely a material that as you had mentioned earlier if you start to make it wet and start to dilute its solidability then it becomes what we would try to do is make it more like baby food and we use a process in anaerobic digestion which is basically a natural occurring process that's been occurring on the earth since man created the earth and it's a process where microorganisms and bacteria basically digest and break down organic material. Now what comes into mind is I'm thinking swamps we don't have swamps here but there is the phenomenon in some swamps of stuff bubbling up and in some cases catching fire any relation between that process and no no relation here just because of the fact when we think about this particular gas in itself it's it's so much lighter than air and so methane gas is a gas that really is hard for us to see or even to taste or smell I mean the smells that we have now when we smell gas is an additive that's basically added for safety so really methane is a greenhouse gas that rises very quickly and again you know could be another another reason for our greenhouse gas effects but for the purpose that we look at naturally and of course what what goes on in nature is you know our green plants are absorbing CO2 for their growth and whatnot as we take a quick lesson in agriculture and what we're doing is we're trying to capture all of that carbon to utilize for energy and as you could see I mean our company is called CH4 ag for the mere purpose of the the formula for methane gas is CH4. Which would be is that four carbons one hydrogen it's actually one carbon four hydrogens yeah and so it is very hydrogen rich you know which can can add to other possibilities right but in this simplistic form and in nature is already existing form we're just taking the most simplistic part of it of taking any organic material and in this purpose we're looking at things that we can control in a green waste form maybe with a mixture of what PVT has to offer and with further analysis and whatnot as we put those things together we're able to have a feedstock that could then go into a tank that has no air in it basically mimicking our stomach so to speak and creating this gas like sometimes when you have too much it's our garlic you might get a little more gas than expected and this is the same process we're trying to create which is a natural process and one of the most significant sources of greenhouse gases is the methane that comes from COS absolutely because they're they're eating I don't know pounds and pounds and pounds of green stuff all day long and they've got their four stomachs and correct yeah we're trying to mimic that but instead of releasing the methane we're basically wanting to capture that methane and then utilize that in a process that is going to be beneficial for for us the the the residents and the folks of the state of hoy well couldn't you import a whole bunch of COS to the site and just kind of shovel stuff in and yeah that that would be another great way to do things as well of course you know our EPO EPA folks now have some restrictions for for those types of things but those are all very plausible possible and are already currently ongoing and so is that another area that we could receive some organic material absolutely and again we're just trying to look at the the the most simplistic sure simplest form that we could start in the state of Hawaii in a demonstration plant that we could then help show the rest of our state this is how we can achieve some of these goals that were we have these aspirations for so lately yeah i'm just kind of looking down the road i'm seeing the potential yeah but on that cherry note we do need to take a break cold green sink tech hawaii mr george pritchard and steve joseph back in a moment hi i'm lisa kimura i'm the host of family affairs on think tech hawaii join us every tuesday at 11am to talk about the issues that really matter everything from policies that need to be changed in hawaii to the fact that we need better gender equality so that we can all have a better shot again join us every tuesday at 11 on think tech hawaii for family affairs aloha aloha i'm dave stevens host of the cyber underground this is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just kind of scare you out of your mind so come join us every week here on think tech hawaii dot com one pm on friday afternoons and then you can go see all our episodes on youtube just look up the cyber underground on youtube all our shows will show up and please follow us we're always giving you current relevant information to protect you keeping you safe aloha welcome back to code green howard wig here with george pritchard manager of ch4 agriculture and steve joseph vice president of pvt landfill and here we thought research was going on in our little state only at uh manoa absolutely not it is going on in on the y&i coast and it's not in little air conditioned buildings it's right out there in front of god and nature and great things are happening let's bring up the the slide of the the methane digester there george if you can explain what in the world is going on here right and what's unique about this digester is the digester technology we're utilizing actually was co-developed at utah state university with a lot of academia and they've been around for probably over 20 years now and this is an ibr digester and what makes it unique is that it is processing solids from materials that have not been broken down and doing it in a very small confined space with great efficiency and so not only are the tanks smaller but the footprint of where we put these are a lot smaller as well which makes it very unique from other digesters that are currently in the marketplace so we're transforming from we saw that photo of the green waste plus the dry wood waste and that goes into the digester and boom out comes a gas biogas as i understand it closely resembling methane well it's exactly resembling methane and it's resembling methane probably in a high content somewhere around the 65 percent of the gas that's coming out is methane and you know i think a great analogy would be or a reference point hoey gas right now is currently extracting this same type of methane gas about 65 percent methane gas from the whole newly wage water treatment plant and so so again this is organic waste material that is producing a methane which is similar to what we hope to accomplish and what we want to develop in this particular tank and then from that point on it could be cleansed and cleaned and then further on use as a pipeline quality gas that they would use in people's homes or they could take the gas in the stage that it is now and utilize that for power generation for different power generators it could be compressed and be put into vehicles utilizing compressed natural gas these are all the great possibilities that are already occurring that we are looking to develop here in hawaii and i believe we have a slide on a flu chart that you go through so can you walk us through here yes very quickly as you can see in step one we're gathering the feedstock materials those organic materials and they're put into a feeding stage which then basically is converting that as as best as we can to a baby food type slurry so that it could be digested it's put into a biological treatment there in step three that and what what goes into the by a lot are you adding bacteria or no this is the material where we start to heat things in there to start to to deteriorate other impurities that are in there and we do that at a temperature and once those impurities are have reached a certain temperature we then send them over to the ibr digester in order for the bacteria and the microorganisms to start to digest and i would guess that that heat comes from biogas the heat will come from biogas from our own existing plant so the plant can be self-sustaining from the biogas that it uses you can see that it'll flow into a storage tank which then that gas will then go up to number seven there which would be a generator which does both combined heat and power we would use some of the heat back to heat our biological pretreatment in step three and we could use the power in order to run the plant in the facility you then would add a further step to clean it if that's the demand of the client and you would then have pipeline quality gas and the yellow line would mean that it is off to the customer any leftover from the tank is again another remarkable component that it produces nothing but digest eats which are basically organic soil amendments that allow us to go back and put on to the various farms that are growing our organic material it could be stuff for our particular farmers which is a very unique thing in what we're doing because the question often is asked well where do you get the number one from well some of that we would look to get from PVT and continue to do analysis there to perfect that a lot of that also right now what we're doing is we're working with our local farmers and being able for our farmers to deliver this material to us so that we can use and there are a few farmers on the Waianae coast to put it mildly absolutely a local source to me absolutely and that's the beauty of this one of the thing that we wanted to interject and add is you know we've developed a relationship right now with castle high school and we're working on a program with castle high school with their future farmers of america program with young keiki there and really wanting to help enhance what they're doing by allowing them to grow this feedstock for us with our assistance and help as far as the department of education would permit us and then basically what we're doing is we're creating a learning mechanism that is being developed by the future farmers of america programs within the school itself and then we would basically assist in however way that we can but then allow them to understand how this is a process that then can go all the way to methane gas to allow our keiki to understand that there's a lot more to farming than maybe just vegetables and food that there's also some other opportunities that they could look at for their own future education and purpose yeah and this addresses two problems that come to mind number one not every child is suited for a strictly academic education of course they need to know the basics of everything but to go off into theoretical physics or romantic french literature whatever is just not their thing they want to do much more hands-on kinetic type stuff and absolutely and this would be a great you know we hope to be able to work together with the folks over at castle high school and the future farmers of america and they're the ag program that they have and however we can incorporate the various opportunities we have i mean it's from planting of crops to construction of a facility of you know looking at microorganisms and biology i mean there's so many other aspects that we again as we continue along we can develop all of these other areas to basically come back and help ourselves for our state and where we live so you're you by getting kids into this type of facility you'd be teaching them without their really knowing it like what is a microorganism what does it do what's this gas stuff all about they've just got to learn that because they're looking at it and they're feeling it and they're seeing the whole process and before you know it they've got a great vocabulary and they know what that vocabulary is all about we're hoping the wax on wax off mechanism will work really well here yeah and another problem is that a lot of farmers will tell you you know we're getting old we're reaching retirement age and none of the young kids are interested in farming but this sounds like a great way to get young kids interested in farming absolutely and and those are our hopes and aspirations and we will be more than willing to help our educators in wherever they need as they develop those particular programs and use us as a tool to help assist our keiki develop other skill sets utilizing utilizing these lands we've we've used as an economic driver for many years and maybe a way that we could utilize these lands again to drive an ag economy for the state of hoy so you mentioned that the in that flu chart the last product was a product suitable suitable for I guess fertilizing egg fields yeah it's a soil amendment right it's very organic and natural it's the it's the byproduct and waste of our microorganism friends in there and that product is going to be rich in nutrients that are excellent for for our farmers that could basically be an amendment to their soils and whatnot and again it's a it's a byproduct coming off of something that we're already doing and that brings up something else is I think Hawaii is the first state to ban I'm saying it wrong glycol phosphate or something like that a a hazardous material that is put on crops at the moment and if they were using this type of amendment instead would that either reduce or eliminate the need for poisonous I think because it's organic and natural it's more possibly going to be better and again you know our inputs of what we put in are going to determine what our outputs are coming out and but the positive side is is whatever is coming out is going to be organic and with further analysis it could then give us potency of of what could be really great and what could be maybe just something that's okay and this piece coming out is high in nitrogen because you've pulled all the carbon and hydrogen away so essentially it's very rich in nitrogen so it would actually that's exactly what you need for yeah I keep hearing that plants love nitrogen yeah yeah so it just kind of keeps getting recycled well you know and that's another part because we know that you know while nitrogen is a helpful piece in one area sometimes you know too much of anything can be hazardous and like I said with with further analysis what we know is what's coming off is is very organic and very green and it's not going to be harmful and we just know as we get to that point we can you know look at further analysis to you know to help our farmers utilize it but we would definitely take it again and send it right back to the farms that are that are growing our feedstock yeah and I bet with given all of this positive news that you're giving us that you might have a last slide with some smiling children in it oh my goodness what these are all our scholarship award winners from nonakuli this last year we pvt gives out four thousand dollar scholarships 10 of them every year at both nonakuli high school and wine high high school because we're trying to encourage them to go on further with their education and what I like about what george is doing especially with department of education is that not only there's so many aspects of it the biological part of his the engineering maintenance on the equipment all of the stuff as well as the farming actually boosts and keeps all that money in our economy and gives gives the kids you know different specialties that they can use and how it fits into a full program like george has got and we keep on hearing about the problem kids there's no good jobs in hawaii unless you want to wash dishes and wiki key so everybody all the young people leave for the mainland but it sounds like this is a good way literally to keep them down on the farm absolutely another way to create some new opportunities for them and see maybe farming and agriculture in a different light and as I mentioned that'll be something we'd really like to support our you know great educators right now and in their efforts in in trying to design those programs for our cakey beautiful that is a very very cheery note to end on cold green howard wig thank you george pritchard thank you steven joseph it's been a very very inspiring program see you next time thank you