 Hey, hello, and welcome to Stand Energy Man on Aloha Friday here in ThinkTec Hawaii where community matters. It's been a busy couple of weeks with Verge two weeks ago, and this week we had an interesting renew rebuild Hawaii yesterday at the Foreign Trade Zone and had some great presentations. The theme, one of the main themes besides microgrids, and of course because I was there I had the hijack hydrogen into it, was sustainability. And that's kind of what we're going to focus on today. You know Hawaii sits on basically two legs of a three-legged stool, and the third leg used to be agriculture, and we still have the military and tourism as the other two main legs. But we're trying to get high-tech and agriculture back in position to be an economic leg of our economy and help us really to be less dependent on mainland, shipping and mainland products for our own sustainable upkeep with food products, but also to use some of the byproducts from agriculture to help us do clean energy. And I told the group yesterday at Renewable Build that one of the best quotes on sustainability I've ever heard was from a gentleman named Robert Kennedy Jr., Bobby Kennedy's son, who's an environmental lawyer. I ran into him about two years ago in Texas, and he said sustainability has to be quantified in economic terms, and it has to go from cradle to grave, has to go from the time you start the project and put in the initial compounds, components, energy, whatever, all the way to what you're going to do at the end of life, whether it's recycle, put it in a landfill, burn it, shoot it off to the sun, whatever it is. And when you don't do the sustainability in that definition, you get things like Yucca Mountain where you got to store nuclear, spent nuclear material and nobody wants it in their backyard, or you get CFL light bulbs where everybody's going, going renewable and going clean and going more energy efficient, only to find out we got mercury in these things and now they're going to end up in landfills, and you make those kind of mistakes. So if you want to do sustainability right, you got to do the cradle to grave analysis. So fully burdened costs of that, that process. And so today we're going to talk a little bit about sustainability and how agriculture and sustainability can be applied here in Hawaii, and my guest today is Dennis Furukawa from Real Green Power. Almost forgot the power part. Dennis, thanks for being here today. Nice to be here. I've known Dennis for quite a while, and don't get a chance to talk to him very much, so he's kind of secretive and he's kind of quiet, but he gets a lot done. So Dennis, tell us a little bit, number one, about how you got started in what you're doing with Real Green Power. Our genesis was all about trying to deal with the massive amounts of water, waste water that was coming out of the sugar mills. And so that was about like eight years ago while we still had sugar mills. There is a lot of energy potential in water in two ways. One of them, when you've got polluted water that has fermentables in it, then you can create biogas, methane, which is a combustible fuel. On the other end, water itself has a lot of energy value. Number one, it takes a lot of energy to access it. And so if you have it in proximity to a use, then you've really shortcut the amount of energy that goes into supplying the resource to where you need it. And then on the other end, it takes an awful lot of permitting and energy and compliance to get rid of waste water. So our main objective was actually to take the water, which is, back then it was in the millions of gallons a day, five to six millions of gallons a day, which was our target. And then there are a lot of other agricultural byproducts in sugar, you're familiar with molasses. There's invert sugars. And then so being able to use those resources in combination with the waste water to produce baseload energy was our objective. So yeah, we went pretty far along that route and then troubles in terms of the stability of the long-term viability of sugar really torpedoed our efforts there. But then at the same time, we were taking a look at processing domestic waste water, which is a much, much larger issue. Our approach is different, however, from the traditional methods of waste water treatment. And our objectives are different too. So our focus was actually taking the technology that we had developed for this ag waste water thing and then use it for domestic. But with a similar objective, though, to create recycled water for ag, and the situation that we have typically is you have a centralized waste water treatment plant, which is located at the lowest spot, right, so that you have gravity working for you. But then that puts it the far furthest away, it could possibly be from where all of the water re-used. Exactly, right. So what we've been focused on is packaging waste water treatment systems so that you can put them in distributed locations so that you can create agricultural water re-uses. Yeah, it's important to realize that energy is in every step of the process. So you've got to look at your whole process, like I said, the whole curtail-of-grave look at where you're using energy. And energy could be potential energy with gravity taking your water all the way down stream and somehow it's got to get back upstream. Things like that are important. And Maui Sugar, which is probably one of the last entities that went down in the sugar business, they were doing the gas to make power on Maui and produce almost all of Maui's power with sugarcane waste. So between recycling the water products and able to use the gas and things like that, really important. I'd like to mention too that a lot of people when they hear methane or they hear natural gas, they automatically get defensive because they go, that's a greenhouse gas. It's not good. Well, it isn't good if you let it up. It's really bad. But the whole idea is nature produces it and you can either let it go into the air or you can use it. And when you use it, especially if you burn it or use it as a natural gas or you pull the hydrogen out of it, now all of a sudden you mitigate all the negatives that you get from natural gas and it turns into something that's usable and something that's more environmentally friendly. So that kind of gets to the heart of what you folks are focusing on and correct. It indeed, yeah. It's trying to essentially take all of those negatives and turn them into positives. The other aspect of our technology is that it's really super energy efficient. And so the latest iterations of our work, we've got package sewage treatment plants that are able to be powered by solar energy, a very small solar package. And then it can be augmented by the renewable energy that is produced through the biogas. But in general, our objectives are to minimize the amount of methane that we're producing because actually, so the biological process that takes you to methane is actually relatively long. It can take days if you've got difficult to digest materials. But the biology that we're utilizing is very rapid in degrading fermentable solids and solubilizing them, making them into liquids. And so our energy efficiency is about 85% better than the traditional methods of sewage treatment. Well, I know we've got some images of some of the mere equipment stuff. You want to go through those and talk to them? Sure. OK, hey, Robert, can you bring up some of those images? So this is your interest slide. Next slide. All right, so our technology was developed at industrial scale. And the objectives were to produce things that could handle in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of gallons per day. And the upper image is at the Hawaii Kai sewage treatment plant. OK, right by Sandy Beach. Exactly. And it was put in there as an alternative means in cooperation with UH, American Waters and AECOM. And it was used as a study. Papers were written, and it indicated that our, that technology right there, was capable of reducing the energy demands by half over the traditional means of sewage treatment. And when did that equipment go into service? That was 2013. OK, and then the lower slide, that's just another view of it? The lower slide is actually a project that predated it by about a year, which is at a brewery in California. And in the background of that, it's a pond full of sludge from brewery wastewater. And so our tanks there were essentially treating that brewery sludge. OK, next slide, Robert. So what we've done is we've focused on providing sanitation in places where there's no sewers. And in particular, because our system is so energy efficient and that we could power the whole thing with just the number of solar panels that are sitting on top of a 20-foot shipping container, the objective was that you could put these things out in the middle of a desert and try and address the problems of displaced people, all of the millions of people that are displaced, and parks, military bases, places where you don't have the infrastructure to support populations. Or for instance, like in a military base, you have groups of people that come and go. They can be lots of people. Sure. Well, they're transient on the way to a deployment or something like that. Yeah, so the objective would be to cite one of these units where you've got that waste issue and then to turn the water into reusable irrigation water. And that pretty much eliminates the need to go around and provide porta-potties. And those things require a lot of servicing. And it's highly cost-intensive. Well, we all know that on an Air Force basis, there's always golf courses. So you definitely want to have water for your golf course to get to the airport. That's really important. That would work perfect for them. Is there any power that comes off of these as well? Or the solar panels provide energy to move your process along. But you're basically providing the water a solution to reusing the water and putting it back into a usable form. Well, so because actually, can we go to the next slide? Sure. Robert, bring up the next slide there. All right, so actually, if you can go to the next one. So what we have here, this is a system that we just installed at a homeless camp on Zand Island. And you can see that we have solar panels on a wastewater treatment unit. And that unit itself, just those six panels, those are 360 watt panels. Those six panels have enough energy to run the bathroom units, which are shown on the lower part of that image. And so if we were actually to put solar panels on top of the bathroom unit as well, we would have export power. Great. That'd be awesome. Yeah, it is kind of awesome. Because the idea would be that if you have a population that is essentially bereft of infrastructure, you can drop these things in there. And as long as you have a source of drinking water and water for showers and whatnot, then you can use this as the center point of creating a small village. Yeah, right. You know, we're about halfway through our 30 minutes here. So we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back with Dennis and talk a little bit more about his system shortly. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Despang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Gabrieli, the host for Young Talent's Making Way here on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matter to tech, matter to science, to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests, the students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talent's Making Way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. Hey, welcome back to Stand Energy Man on my lunch hour. We're talking sustainability and turning what everybody else doesn't want into something that you can actually use, which is always nice. And I've got Dennis Furukawa here from Real Power, Real Green Power. I'm close, I'm really close. I almost got it. At my age, I'm lucky to remember anything. And Real Green Power takes wastewater and treats it and makes it usable for agriculture and other things right where you need it, which is the key part. Because every time you're moving something, old, cubby business people know that transportation is non-value added. It doesn't do anything but cost you stuff and it gets your stuff to market, but you don't need it to build it, you don't need it to make stuff. So we bring in value to water and treating it and using it where you need it. So we're showing some pictures of potential use in homeless camps and things like that. So let's jump back into some of those images and see what we've got coming up. So this is the one that, this one you said is at Sand Island here on Oahu? Yes, it is. Okay. And what we have there is the things behind the blue doors. Those are full bathrooms. So it's a shower, a toilet, and a sink. Okay. So it provides hygiene and sanitation. All right. And next image, Robert. This is what it looks like inside then. Right, so in the image prior to that, essentially we had the bathrooms in a separate container as a wastewater thing. So, and that was because we needed extra capacity. We needed, the image that you're seeing here, those are only, those are six half bathrooms. Okay, I see. Right, so there's no showers in there. Whereas the other one with the requirement was just half showers. So in this case, what the objective is, is something that you can drop onto a site plug it in and then start processing for irrigation uses. And one of the largest headaches that you have in dealing with domestic wastewater is what to do with sludge. The sludge. Yeah. And our process essentially concentrates up sludge. It focuses on processing the water. And then so the volume of sludge that you remove is really, really small. So we're, in this case, we've been operating the sewage, or the sanitation thing for about three weeks over at the Sand Island facility. And we've ended up with about 150 gallons of sludge. And in a typical situation, right, you would, well, the current, or the situation that they had there was not processing and using portable potties. They were removing several thousand gallons a day of wastewater by hauling. So when you let the sludge concentrate a little bit, from my understanding, you actually help downstream in terms of, if you wanted to take that sludge and put it in like a gasifier, you just have to dewater it a little bit because the gasifier needs some moisture in it. And you could actually take that sludge and process it through a gasifier, which would, again, give you power and heat and other things. And again, it's like using that whole value chain in the process. So take the sludge, dewater it a little bit more, stick it in the gasifier, get some power and some heat. And then that's another added energy source at your site right there. Well, you know, on the energy efficiency side and the water quality side, by removing all of those solids and not liquefying them, then all of the carbon and nitrogen and phosphorus and magnesium and all of those things are actually held back in the sludge. And then so the water quality is better on the back end. So, yeah, we're just really trying to focus on the efficiency of, yeah. So what's the next image we got, Robert? Actually, you can continue down. A little bit more. Yeah. Oh, that's the last image you have? OK, this is the last image that came through. So we can get all of them on there, I guess. But I think you had somewhere, you can talk to the ones that we have here on the sheets. But we had some here. And also, there were some where it actually showed over in African continent some of the refugee camps on African continent. Exactly. So there's a program that's developed by a nonprofit called Face2Face. And their objective is to teach villagers in these remote locations how to reuse their domestic water. Mostly, it's their bathing water and the stuff for dishes to create small gardens that are next to their houses, rather than relying entirely on the farmland that is outside of the village, which is not personal. So you can't decide that you want to grow tomatoes or cucumbers when essentially the village is growing sorghum, for example. And it has been transformative. So you've got, within two months, you've got people who have kale to eat. And in a few months, corn and pumpkin and squashes, and it's made a huge difference in their diets. Now, we'd like to take that and to do that at refugee camps because everybody has hygiene, or the good refugee camps have a pretty good hygiene requirement and facilities for that. But I mean, if you take a look at the images of these refugee camps or some trees, there's no parks. There's no way for them to actually grow food. So our objective is actually to work with nonprofits like Face2Face or the UNHCR and get the reuse of water and small-scale farming going in these refugee camps. And the economic snowball effect is really powerful because it's not that you're just going to have one or two people growing lettuce and hoarding it. There's a lot of sharing. And if you can create cooperation between individual families or blocks of families and get value-added activities like making salads or baking bread or creating value-added food products or creating other services, then you've actually brought a lot of dignity back to the lives of these people because it's not that they're just necessarily waiting for hand out. And a lot of these people come from very mercantile backgrounds. I mean, in Syria, that's the focal point of global trade back in the ancient world. So these people have lots and lots of experience in these sorts of things. And that's all been lost because they've been refugees. So if we can help glue everything back together in a small way, it will bring a lot of dignity and a lot less strife and happiness, I think. I know in a lot of the underdeveloped locations around the world, human waste is put right back into fields and stuff, and that causes other problems. How does your system basically mitigate that? We want to do that in Hawaii with all the permitting and things that you mentioned. How do we get things like waste at Sand Island going to the system to be in the sludge that we can put back in the field as fertilizer and put the nitrogen and everything back where we really need it? How does your system do that? Well, first of all, you separate the water from the solids. So the solids go towards a composting, or if you wanted to put it in age power or something like that, that's quite possible. But the water, depending upon the reuse, there are requirements for reuse. And so our biological process will take it so far. And then the addition of filtration, polishing, and disinfection will allow that water to be used for any grade of water, which you decide to choose. Now there are requirements for testing that you would be subject to if you were going to propose using this for, for instance, reuse for washing yourself, or flushing toilets, or putting it on food products. But we've built in capacity to meet whatever sorts of reuse. But this is part of your proprietary process then to mitigate any of the dangers involved with reusing this wastewater or whatever and using it viably in agriculture and putting it back into service, basically. Right, well there's essentially two main focuses. One, to get all of the particulates out of there and the viruses and all of that is the second part. So yeah, we focus on our proprietary part is actually the biological processing of it. And then we can plug on, for instance, reverse osmosis, UV disinfection, or any other sorts of process change which are required by the various jurisdictions that we find ourselves in. Yeah, I know most people would find this a little uneasy to talk about at dinner time or something. But let's face it, if you're an astronaut in space, they don't flush their toilet and stick it out the window. I mean, they're recycling their water, probably using similar processes to what you're talking about. And they end up reusing every bit of H2O they can get through their system. So there are systems that are designed to take care of those issues. And we probably should be doing more to use them, especially if we can use them economically and help sustain our environment. Because Hawaii needs to get more back into growing its own food, things like that. We've got that down. The ancient Hawaiians supported about the same size population as we have now. And they didn't have Costco or Sam's Club or Safeway or anybody or Food Ladder, anybody to bring all this food in. And they did it. And so why can't we do it too? They probably got to look back and look at some of their stuff too. So Dennis, we were not a half hour full on by. And we appreciate you coming and showcasing your stuff. We're glad to have you back another couple months and talk about maybe some of your deployed units out in other places and catch up with you then. So thanks for being with us. And until next week, just down there and sign it off. And we'll catch up to you with some more great things in the world of energy. Aloha.