 We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel and Think Tech. This is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Let me say it again. This is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Whoa, very important. It's probably the most important initiative we have. We've got to focus on it all the time, spend all the money we have to spend. Never be distracted from our, won't you agree? I agree. Let's keep moving forward with it. This is Ramsey Brown from Hawaiian Electric. I'd rather say Hawaii Energy. He's an energy engineer at Hawaii Energy. Next to him, we have our principal guest today, Godwin Savera. He's an assistant researcher at HNEI, the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at UH Manila. Next to him, Trevor Morgan, again an assistant researcher, but doing different kind of research at Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at UH Manila. Welcome all of you to the show. Thank you. All right, Ramsey, your turn. Well, we were talking about verge, and so I thought I'd tell our guests about this excellent conference that happened. And being newer in this industry, it was fun to just be alongside and rub elbows with a lot of high profile folks in our energy industry. But the biggest takeaway for me was to be in action and to empower other people to be in action. We talked about policy. We talked about price signals on our way here to starting the show. But really, what can we do to get the ball rolling and get in action? And that's what I saw on some of the panels we had. Brian Kealoja was on a panel with Commissioner Keeba, so we got to talk about policy there. And then we had Caroline Carl, our deputy, who was on a panel with an LED salesperson, who was in there installing LEDs, telling us from the front lines what's going on and how do we connect the policy and the research to what's actually the boots on the ground and what's happening out there. You were clearly in evidence there. You and Brian and Caroline. And it was great to see Hawaii Energy be so well represented and be involved in these policy panels. You guys are sort of, you know, going out to the front line here when you do that. So I hope you do it all the time. Yeah, that's what we want to continue to do, continue the conversation. And we'll show some of your viewers exactly what Verge was about through a little short video clip. Okay, let's see it. Thank you guys. So that was Verge. We're going to keep the conversation going, keep this synergy working together. We want to leverage other community groups as we talked about. My personal goal this upcoming year is to get out more in front of the customers to work with other groups such as HNEI, the Chamber of Commerce, the Architectural and Engineering Organization to see what we can do to actually make this happen, be in action. Yeah, you can be the glue. Everybody likes you guys. So you can be the glue. You can bring all the players together and sort of a coalescence. Have them work together. Yeah, have them collaborate. Play nice. Yeah, yeah. Okay, Ramsey, this is great. Thank you for coming down. Thank you for doing the conference. I thought the conference was very good. Think Tech made a movie of it, part of it anyway, and I'm happy that you made a part of it, a movie of part of it too. Our movie will play, oh gee, a couple of weeks from now on OC16. Well, definitely. That's Spectrum OC16. Spectrum. Thank you very much, Ramsey. Thanks for having us. Aloha. We'll be right back. We're going to take a short break and then we're going to discuss the research that's being done at HNEI with Trevor Morgan and Godwin Severa. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Pesulter, and I'm the host of Power Up Hawaii, which you can see live from one to one-thirty every Tuesday at thinktechhawaii.com and then later on YouTube. I am an energy attorney, clean energy advocate and community outreach specialist, and on Power Up Hawaii, we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean, renewable, and just energy future. To do that, we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum from clean energy technology folks to community groups to politicians to regulators to the utility. So please join us Tuesdays at one o'clock for Power Up Hawaii. Hey, Aloha. This is Andrew from Integrated Security Technologies out here on behalf of PSA and your Cyber Security Committee. I got through Denver. I thought I'd give you a quick update on what we're doing, heading into convention. I hope you all get down there in October. If you haven't gotten into Tier Zero yet and worked on that material, I encourage you to do so. But I can tell you that our committee is moving on through tiers one through five. And we've got some great new tools to help you sort of gauge yourself and help you with your policies and your implementations through tiers one and two. I'll be presenting that material down there at convention, so please come on down. And in the meantime, if there's any particular issues that you have and feel free to send them to the committee, we've got a great group of folks working there. And if you've got some people on your team that are more interested in this, feel free to have them call us up and maybe they can join our committee and help out a little bit. So thanks a lot. I look forward to seeing you there. Aloha. Some say scuba divers are the poor man's astronaut. At Diveheart, we believe that to be true. We say forget the moon. Diveheart can help children, adults, and veterans of all abilities escape gravity right here on Earth. Search Diveheart.org and imagine the possibilities in your life. Okay, we're back. We're back. We're live with the second part of our Hawaii State of Clean Energy show today. And it features what are we calling it? Energy technology for the future. Breakthrough innovation. Whoa, exciting. There's mystery there. I feel excited now. And in case you didn't recognize the lady on the far end, that is Sharon Moriwaki. She's co-chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum and a central figure in the development of Clean Energy in the United States for about 100 years. She only knows. Say hello, Sharon. Hello and welcome. I knew you'd say that. Okay, so we're going to break this down. First, HNEI, Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. It's at UH Minoa, but it's also a facility on Cook Street or near Cook Street downtown. And we have been meeting this month. We're meeting some fabulous researchers from really all over the world who are doing world-class research and energy right here. In case you didn't know it, you got to know that. That's a big take-home point that we have real talent here at HNEI. Yeah, and so they're working on things that are really cutting-edge and the world needs these things and certainly Hawaii needs these things if it's going to, you know, make traction in renewable energy technology. And you need new technology. If we don't do it with somebody else, I promise we'll do it. The stakes are huge. And these guys are working completely different things. I hope you talk to each other. Have coffee once in a while. We do. Say hi. Okay, Godwin, let's begin with you. Godwin Savera, assistant researcher, PhD and MBA. What do you need an MBA for? To commercialize technology. Oh, got it. Okay, you're a commercialization guy. That's it about your madness now, yeah. So tell us about your research. So my research at HNEI is focused on developing new materials that we can use for hydrogen storage and for air purification because you need clean air for your fuel cell. The air that we have in the air is compounds like carbon dioxide, like sulfur dioxide, which can combine with the platinum catalyst in fuel cells and reduce the efficiency of fuel cells. So part of my research is trying to make new materials that can be used to remove the impurities before the air can get into our fuel cells. So we have fuel cells now at work, right? Yes. But you're going to try to make them more efficient in the way they burn the fuel. My intention is really to try to make sure that the fuel cell operates with the efficiency that it's supposed to because that's why I'm more like working on the ends of the fuel cell firstly on the air that's going into the fuel cell that's providing the oxygen that's needed to maintain the efficiency of the fuel cell. I want to make sure that that air is pure so that you don't lose your fuel cell efficiency. And the process you're working on would include little tiny little fuel cells like that that you put in a computer but also very big huge scale fuel cells that you use to generate lots of power, right? Yes. In other words, whatever you're doing will affect all fuel cells. Yes. Mostly the main focus for now has been the PM fuel cells the ones that we intend to use for automobile applications. Oh, okay. So how do you make the air pure, the air that you feed into this chemical process? So what you do is the state of the art right now uses compounds like poracium hydroxide that's being deposited on activated carbon but the challenge with these state of the art materials is that they are not reversible. So it means after a while you have to take out that filter and throw it out and then at the end of the day you can imagine if we have a lot of fuel cell cars you are going to generate a lot of hazardous waste. So my intention is to make filter materials that you can be able to regenerate so that you can continuously use it and that have higher capacity so that it lasts longer than the normal materials that are used currently. So is it that you never have to throw it away then if you're successful in your breakthrough? Eventually any chemical at some point will lose efficiency but my intention is to really just to make sure that instead of throwing it maybe after 100 hours maybe throw it after 1000 hours and also instead of capturing 100 grams of pollutants maybe capture 200 grams or 300 grams of pollutants so I'm looking at both ends of the spectrum trying to increase performance but also increase the longevity of the air filter materials. We can do things to recycle instead of going to the waste and the dump is getting so full if there's any way that we can stop that from going as well. Yeah, that would be helpful. What I hear you saying is that the membrane and the fuel cell deteriorates. If there are contaminants in the air that's fed into the process the fuel cell is going to deteriorate quicker? Yes, specifically what I'm looking at is the issue mostly has to do with the platinum catalyst because for instance when the platinum combines with sulfur dioxide it forms... Which would be an impurity. Yeah, which would be an impurity. It forms platinum sulfide and then that platinum is no longer available for helping with the production of energy in the fuel cell. We boil down all the wedding rings. Okay, that'll do. But Godman said there was a thing on the back end too that you're working on, right? You said you're reducing the impurities of going into the fuel cell. But on the back end are you doing something? You said there are two things you're working on. Oh yes, on the other side I'm trying to make hydrogen storage materials because currently we are using the state of the art is the 700 bar hydrogen tanks. I mean which are really... So in the short term that's a good thing but in the long term we need materials which are much safer. The way you don't have to worry about the high pressure that's being used with the 700 bar. And also where you have less... you have more space in your car because with the 700 bar hydrogen tanks it's very big. So the solution would be to... I have compounds called metohydrates that can store hydrogen in the solid state and you can store more hydrogen per unit volume compared to the amount you store in the high pressure tank. So right now I actually have a DOE Department of Energy project where I'm looking at making new novel materials that are geared towards improving metohydrates for automobile applications. So you're working on multiple aspects of the fuel cell. The air and the materials that go into the fuel cell itself. Yes. And the storage materials. So you're all over fuel cells. Yes, the intention is really to make sure that we make it into the clean energy economy and we think of things that might not necessarily be of concern now but that could be of concern once that clean energy economy is there. So what's the potential breakthrough in your area that you're working on that you think will take us... transform or take us into the future for an efficient fuel cell? Cheaper, more efficient fuel cell? So in terms of fuel cell, I think the fuel cell itself I think that topic was discussed with Dr. Jean Pierre. But what I can talk to is on terms of the storage. So what I'm really looking at is trying to have materials that are reversible that you can still... that can reversibly store hydrogen for long periods of time without having to throw the material away. Similar to what I'm working on with the air purification materials. But I'm also trying to make sure that those materials work under normal operating conditions of fuel cells which is around ages to 100 degrees C. So the biggest breakthrough in terms of metal hydrides will be really to try to make the materials reversible and also make them work at the lower temperatures of between 80 to 100 degrees C. So that's really where most of my research is. You're looking for a patent? Do you have a patent? So you're looking for a patent? Oh, I actually have a patent based on magnesium boride. We did... this is a patent between the University of Hawaii and the Sandia National Labs. And we managed to hydrogenate magnesium boride back to magnesium borohydride. So the magnesium borohydride will be the material that you can potentially use in your... as a hydrogen source for your fuel cell. And then it forms the decomposition or the... after removing the hydrogen you end up with the magnesium boride. So that had never been done before to hydrogenate the magnesium boride back to magnesium borohydride. And there's a lot of research that is going on right now with the Department of Energy that's focused on trying to make this material work at lower temperatures and lower pressures. Yeah, we hope so. We hope the Department of Energy will continue to support your research, but we are not sure that will happen these days. But what is your PhD in chemistry, material science? What do you have? My PhD is in chemistry. So my thesis was on hydrogen storage materials development for my PhD. I actually did my PhD here at the University of Hawaii. And then after that I did my postdoc where I was looking at Hawaii Natural Energy Institute where I was looking at using ionic liquids for the pretreatment of biomass prior to the use of that biomass in biofuel production. Okay. Well, let me ask Trevor. Trevor, are you impressed? Very impressed. I knew you would be impressed. I'm very impressed with him, too. Okay, okay. And Shannon and I are impressed with both of you. So, Trevor, tell us about your science. Okay, so I'm more of a chemical engineer, but I've also got a... My first degree is analytical chemistry. So it's a combination of analytical chemistry and chemical engineering. And the work I'm doing here in Hawaii is mainly focused on thermochemical engineering. So that's using basically heat temperatures, that's the thermo part, to drive chemical reactions to produce products that we want. So particularly... And chemical reactions includes combustion, no? Exactly, yep. So that includes everything from combustion through to gasification to pyrolysis. So just to briefly explain, combustion is a process where there's enough oxygen to fully react with the carbon and hydrogen in your fuel to produce CO2 and water. If there's not enough oxygen, then the material will break down producing CO, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen. So their reactive gases that have a number of uses, they can even be burn, which is more efficient than burning, say, biomass and burning biomass directly to produce heat and power. You can decompose the biomass into a gas which is composed of hydrogen and CO. Now that can actually be used to feed a fuel cell as in the work that Godwin's doing. But the problem is if there are any contaminants in that gas, it will damage the fuel cell. Same gas, the same issue. You guys do have a common denominator, right? Exactly, yeah. There's a lot of overlap with these things. And also you can use that gas to drive reactions to produce methanol, diesel, gasoline, jet fuel. So some of the projects I'm working on is looking at making jet fuel from biomass here in Hawaii. That would be an amazing discovery. Is that happening anywhere else? It's being done all around the world. But it's a question of whether it would be done efficiently. We're specifically looking at tropical feedstocks because most of the work happens in Europe or mainland US and they're not looking at tropical feedstocks because they don't have them. Now if we do turn to a biomass economy, it would make sense that most of the biomass could be produced in tropical regions in much greater yield than in mainland Europe or the United States. So when you go to work every day at the laboratory, at the East West Center Road up there in UH Madal, what do you do? You test, I guess both of you, you're testing on different processes and materials to see how they work together, yeah? Yeah, so we do a lot of experimental work. So we design reactors and then we build those reactors and then we put our samples in their process. We do this on small scale mainly because you've got much greater control of the variables. It's one of the things people don't really appreciate when you go to a much larger scale. It's much more difficult to isolate individual variables and understand their role in the process. So processes like I work on gasification pyrolysis, you've got many, many competing reactions and processes, pressure, temperature, time, all have an effect. So Godwin, Godwin looking for a patent, he's talking about material science, talking about taking one kind of compound or another and seeing if it works to do what he wants. But in your case, what are you looking for a patent on? Do you have one? Well, so I don't have any patents actually. Most of the work I do is just put out into a public domain and with the idea that that information is then available to anybody and if industry can make use of that, go ahead and make use of it. Because for me it's not about me personally making money, I would rather see progress. That's very altruistic. No money, we want that. We want Hawaii to be a center. You can get carried away chasing money. And a lot of the work we're doing is building off of maybe like 100 years of research that's gone into coal and petroleum. So a lot of the processes we use are very similar. Developed and petroleum. Biomass is a much more complicated material to work with because it's very variable in its composition. So we say coal, we know that this type of coal has these properties no matter where you find it in the world. So when it goes into a power station, they know what they're dealing with. The problem with biomass, you can have eucalyptus growing on this side of the field and it will have different properties so eucalyptus on the other side of the field sometimes and particularly if it's on different locations. You have to know about plant science. So you really need to know about these things. And this is the problem. So a lot of people sort of think biomass is biomass, it's all the same. No, it's not. And particularly when you become to waste streams like municipal solid waste, we do work on that as well trying to produce hydrogen or usable fuels. But again, the inhomogeneity of the fuel causes you a lot of problems. So what we see would be a good idea if there was more sorting of the waste when it was collected. So if you collected wood waste separate from plastic waste and keep glass amounts. Best practices thing. Because then you can get a more uniform feedstock which your reactor can handle much better when the composition is constantly changing. So what's the big innovation you're looking for I'm anticipating Shannon's question. Just before that question, I just wanted to know of all the testing that you've done on different feedstock is there any one that rises to the top is it plastic or how do you or is it plant sources or how do you identify what are really good feedstock to get the most energy? Well, there's always trade-offs. There's no sort of perfect solution. If there was a simple perfect solution it would already be done. So a lot of the time it's actually just getting good quality data and building up those data sets and then making decisions based on what your actual application is and what you have available. So a good fuel is wood. So like eucalyptus wood is a good fuel. But the problem is that's kind of a high value wood because it's a clean material that's got many uses. So often we want to use lower value materials. So there's one thing we're working on called barnar grass which basically looks like sugarcane. It's actually a grass that has a very low sugar content. But that material will grow about 10 foot tall in about six months with a big, thick stem which is maybe one or two inches in diameter. So it produces very, very high yield of material. But on the downside it has a very high ash content and that high ash content can cause you problems in your construction. So one of the things we look at is say like using water washing to wash the biomass first we move some of those ash components and then we can get the fuel properties closer to a good fuel such as a wood. So what's the big innovation you're looking for? What's the aha moment? What's the achievement you want to reach here? It rarely happens that you get the big aha moment. What you tend to find is you make small steps towards your goals. And then as other researchers are doing things often it will be somebody else other than the people doing the research who will take an overview see different aspects of different people's works and then see a way to put that together in a way that will be financially viable. Because there's lots of things we can do but we can't do them cost effectively. So it always really comes back to cost to be commercially applied. So you might have the best process in the world it's clean but if it's going to make your electricity cost two or three times as much as you're paying now no one's interested. So in a funny way I see you guys in competition. What I mean is you're both looking for a way because you're trying to achieve a disruptive technology that will change renewable energy and rise to the top of the attention span somehow where everybody will say well that's it that's what we're going to do. Everybody to that side of the boat. Isn't that true? Aren't you in competition? We are in because the good thing about HNEI you have a lot of different areas which really can come together perfectly. Like it's producing hydrogen but that hydrogen can be used to for my materials that I'm making because I need to put hydrogen to absorb so that I need to absorb hydrogen on them and then we hand it over to the fuel cell the people doing the fuel cell actual component so that they integrate it into the fuel cell and then we have also the other people that are doing the demonstration of some of these technologies that we are making so there is really a lot of synergy which I think makes us even more competitive and more unique because you have different people working or different researchers working on different aspects and they can share ideas and come up with a better product than having individual groups in different parts of the country. So the other focus, your MBA focus on commercialization what kinds of things are you working on or anyone at HNEI working on is like almost there or there in commercializing whatever the research might be. So in terms of I haven't really yet the opportunity I'm starting to want to go towards commercialization now but most of the years commercialization is handled through OTED I think right now I think in collaboration with the University of Arizona's patent office so most of it is and also I think there is another group within the university that's been created to help small, if you have a good idea that you want to see if it can be feathered or that could be commercialized you can get maybe $5,000 or $10,000 and then you try to see if it can be commercialized on a smaller scale. Now I understand the MBA. I'm sure in a few years time or maybe in two years I might be coming back. I hope you still talk to us after you're a multi-billionaire. He can fund my research. General out of time, we want to try to summarize is the obligation of the co-host is? I think this is wonderful that Hawaii Natural Energy Institute has researchers like both Trevor and Godwin that really looking at different technologies also storage whether it's biomass and uses of biomass but that there's a hookup to the commercializing aspect so it's not just pure science but it's science that is useful for the society so I'm really looking forward for you to come back and tell us what your breakthroughs come through to share with the public as well because everybody is interested in renewable energy and what we can do most cost-effectively. So it's not only altruism then Trevor. There is a commercial aspect. I like being paid. I would say this though. We spent a month with you guys. We've had four shows and it's really beautiful. What you're doing, you're putting Hawaii on the map in terms of the highest possible science as far as renewable energy is concerned. We're so proud of you. We want you to export knowledge everywhere whether by altruism or sheer money. Either way is fine. We want to be a leader in clean energy. You guys are part of that mission. We'll be back again. Thank you, Trevor. Thank you.