 We're back. We're live. Here it is on a given Tuesday at the one o'clock rock and we're doing think tech tech talks with a fellow by the name of Lynn Muller and he is with international wastewater systems and joins us by Skype. Lynn, where are you exactly? I'm at my home here in Vancouver. Good. Love Vancouver. Wonderful, wonderful city. So you have invented something and we want to talk about that. It's a wastewater heat recovery system and you're using it. You've actually installed it in some buildings and I like this is and this is heat from sewage from raw sewage. Tell us how you know what your training was that you could identify this technology and then tell us how you actually identified it. Well, Jay, it's a kind of a long road to get here, but I started as a farmer and a very practical means of doing things. So I got into the air conditioning and heating business and then I got into the geothermal heat pump business and this just kind of led into the sewage heat recovery business. Okay, and then one day you decided that maybe we could do this from sewage. I mean, how did you come across that thought? Is this something that you knew scientifically or did you just think of it one day based on your farming and heat pump experience? Exactly. And from having three daughters and watching the shower run pretty much all day and on three. And my goodness, that old hot water tank's burning out every two years, so it must be working hard. So you figured that sewage would somehow be able to ferment and the fermentation would provide heat. And then you built and I've seen it on your website. You built this sort of Rube Goldberg contraption with lots of lots of pipes and tanks and the like and it looks clean from the outside. And at the end of the day, there it is. Let's take a look at that. What is this and what are the elements of it, Lynn? Well, Jay, we don't ferment the sewage or anything. We just clean it up. So we take warm sewage water and we take all the solids and particles out of it and we put it through that heat exchanger, you can see. And we just use the second law of thermodynamics that heat moves from warmer to colder and we recover the heat and we make it efficient by using a heat pump. So when we say we're four or five hundred percent efficient, that means for every dollar you spend, you get four or five dollars worth of energy back. In Hawaii where your electrical rate is very high, that's got to be a very appealing idea. Yeah, oh yeah. Well, we care a lot about energy in Hawaii. So let me understand the process though. The sewage is naturally warm. Is that what it is? Because this has just come from someone's bathroom. And using an exchanger, you exchange the heat out into something that's cooler and thereby make the second system of pipes warmer. What does the heat pump got to do with that? Well, the heat pump is like your refrigerator. And so when the inside of your refrigerator is cold, but the back of the outside is warm. So that's just moving the heat from one source to another and magnifying. So usable temperature. So we can heat up to a hundred forty degree Fahrenheit water. So that's the magnification process. That's what's interesting. How do you magnify this relatively small increase difference in temperature to a hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit? Well, you do that. That's where my refrigeration training came in. As you absorb that energy into refrigerant, then you use the electricity to compress it and increase the temperature. And you do that very efficiently. So if that takes a certain amount of electrical energy, right? Exactly. But only one-fifth to one-quarter of the amount it would take to warm it up using an electric element. I see, I see. So the design you just showed us would heat the water for a certain number of units in an apartment building. How many units would that piece of equipment heat up, provide hot water for it? That one actually went into an apartment building with a thousand apartments. No kidding. Yeah. So what does that do, you know, numerically in terms of, you know, an outcome? What does that do for that thousand unit apartment building? Well, almost a megawatt of heating energy. So when you relate to electricity, it's taking a megawatt off the grid. That's fabulous. Yeah. And it would have gone down the drain out into the ocean? Yeah, sure. So now, when you're done exchanging the heat off the sewage, what happens to the sewage? Does that go into the ocean? I mean, where does that go? No, it just continues on its way to the treatment plant. And all we've done is remove the heat out of it. I see. It's that simple. The really appealing thing, Jay, is that it's the same heat every day. You use it, down the drain, you catch it, you use it again. Yeah. And the sewage is going to flow like it does in every other building down into the sewage system. Yeah. And we don't do anything to it. We don't do anything to it. As far as changing the state, we just change the temperature. So now in the building, this depends on the number of people who are using the bathroom in the building, right? It's all contained within the building. If everybody's on vacation in the Bahamas, then you're going to have fewer people using the bathroom. And therefore, the numbers have to change. Am I right? Well, only by the fact that it only needs whatever is coming down the drain. So one of the great things too is the source always matches the load. I see. So you can never have too little or too much. Right. Because you're turning this heat back to the same number of people. So if everybody is in the Bahamas, then there are fewer people looking for a hot shower. That's what you're saying. Yeah. But the thing that you wouldn't expect is that your sanitary uses, your showers, your laundry, your going to the bathroom is so predictable, it's frightening. Sure it is. I mean, it is with most people anyway. So does that predictability play into it? I mean, are you keeping numbers? Are you keeping analytics? Who's going to the bathroom and when? Yeah, well, the human waste part of it is the very small part of it. But the overall occupancy, you could really count on it as part of your base load. So you don't have to think of it as alternative energy because it's predictable as it can be. I guess what you're doing is you're actually keeping the heat, the energy within the system. You're just not letting the heat escape and you keep on recycling the heat through all the systems in the building. Therefore, you don't have to buy new heat. It sounds elegant and simple. It's extremely simple. I guarantee you it's the lowest tech, high tech piece of equipment in the world. Fabulous. Now, what is this? And by the way, this system does not require the whole building to be outfitted with new plumbing. You're just connecting it to the plumbing, right? That's correct. That's all you're doing. So the room we're looking at now on the slide, that is the only, that is it. That's your contribution to the systems in the building. That's right. I get two questions all the time. The number one is, if I put it in my building, will I smell it? Yes. The answer to that is absolutely not. It's completely sealed. And the second question is, what about two o'clock in the morning when everybody's in bed and there's no flow? Well, the answer to that is that there's probably no use for it at that time. But we also store it in the tank, so we have about half the day's flow stored. I see. So then you store it in the tank and then you put it through the system whenever you want. That's right. And I suppose that if this is not creating enough heat, you always have the possibility, in fact it probably included in the contention aspect of the system, that you can buy heat. You can buy hot water from... Exactly. ...wherever. Or you have a water heater. Am I right? Yeah, we'll have a backup water heater in case. They are machines, after all, and they will break down from time to time. They're very seldom, but you do have the contingency plan for it. Okay. I'm going to ask you my third question. I mean, the third question appears to me right after the short break. And I'll tell you in advance my third question. How much is this cost? We need to know what the pricing is, okay? We're going to take a short break. That's Lynn Muller. We're talking about wastewater heat recovery in Vancouver. We'll be right back. Thanks, Jake. Hi, my name is Kim Lau, and I'm the host of Hawaii Rising. You can watch me live every other Monday at 4 p.m. Aloha. Aloha, Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green Think Tech Hawaii. I appear every other Monday at 3 in the afternoon. Do not tune in in the morning. My topic is energy efficiency. It sounds dry as heck, but it's not. We're paying $5 billion a year for imported oil. My job is to shave that, shave that, shave that down in homes and buildings while delivering better comfort, better light, better air conditioning, better everything. So if you're interested in your future, you'd better tune in to me three o'clock every other Monday Code Green Aloha. And thank you very much. We're back. We're live with Lynn Muller, who joins us by Skype from Vancouver. And he has a company there called International Wastewater Systems, engaged in a discovery he himself made, which is wastewater heat recovery. And he's got an installation or two in some large buildings there in Vancouver. And we've seen some pictures of these these these setups. And really remarkable. And I was wondering how big is it and how much is it cost? Well, there's sort of custom fit, Jay. So there's a range of price from $50,000 to, you know, several million. But the common thing is you can expect to recover your money in three to seven years. That's pretty good. No matter what the cost, you're going to get it back in a very short order. And it's easy to measure that because you just take the difference between what you would have spent with heating, heating fuel oil and the like, as against what you didn't spend while you had the system working. Well, absolutely. On your break clip, there was a gentleman on there every other Monday at three, and he was talking about energy efficiency. So we should be talking to him as well, because all the energy throw away and water feeding, you can get back in Hawaii. I don't imagine a lot of heat. Well, I wanted to ask you about that. By the way, that's Howard Wigg and his show on Monday is called Code Green. And he's interested in building codes and how to improve buildings through the use of smart codes, if you will. But so, you know, in Vancouver it gets cold once in a while. Not as cold as some of the other parts of Canada, but it's cold. And I, you know, what appears to me is that if you have a cold environment, like all across Canada and maybe all across northern US, this is going to be very valuable because, you know, you need a lot of heat in order for, you know, for residential and commercial buildings, for that matter, to operate at a reasonable cost. So what about Hawaii, though? We don't use heat here. We have hot water. I mean, you know, we have a lot of solar hot water and electric hot water and the like. But we don't need a lot of, you know, heating fuels and that, which you would find in North America. So is it still useful for us? Oh, absolutely, because you can air condition with it as well. So instead of moving heat out of the sewer, we can move heat into it. No modification to the system. It just follows the second law of thermodynamics where heat moves from warmer to colder. So heat from your building would move into the sewer system. And with water being a major issue everywhere in the world, saving that cooling tower water is enormous. I see. So it's the same principle, exactly the same. But it's in reverse. Absolutely. Are you taking essentially the cold from existing air conditioning, I suppose, and you're recycling the cold in the same way that you recycled the heat? Yeah, and saving the water. So we've got one job in New Jersey where we can save 60 million gallons of water a year by using the sewer system. Remarkable. So what is the extent of your penetration now? I mean, clearly Vancouver and British Columbia, you know, that's your home base. But where else have you and you mentioned a thousand unit apartment house there. And on your site, there are photographs and videos of various buildings looks like in Vancouver. But how far have you extended your, you know, your marketing? Well, we've just finished our first major university in Scotland. So we converted the entire university from natural gas to sewage heat recovery. We just did one in Camden, New Jersey, in Melbourne, Australia. So we have now got worldwide operations. And you're still talking to us. It's a pleasure, Jay. Well, you know, there's no limit to where this can go. It can go hot, it can go cold. You know, as I was using a joke about the thermos bottle, the famous thermos bottle, and the rhetorical question about the thermos bottle is, has it no the difference? It's the same thing with your system. It doesn't need to know the difference. It's just equalizing. To give you an idea of the scale of the opportunity in the US is the Department of Energy in 2009 did a study that showed 40 billion dollars worth of energy is just put down the drain in the US every year. Yep. So, I mean, are they beating a path to your door? You know, it strikes me that, you know, you have some very nice installations, but this ought to be, this, you know, ought to be, you know, a very popular science, a very popular technology. And they should be coming to you from all parts of the world because you can save them so much money. Have you been, you know, have you been shy about your marketing? Well, we've really never marketed. So we have relied on word of mouth, etc. But it's not unusual to get calls from around the world every day. Yeah. Oh, that's great. You must love it, actually, to find an environmentally friendly, you know, community-based kind of operation like this, help everybody make the world a better place. And I just wonder, you know, so this has been going on for, what, at least a couple of years now, maybe more. Six years. Six years. And have you made refinements in your original design? Can we talk about what you might have changed? Well, we've got bigger. So when we first started, we couldn't imagine anybody need more than 300 gallons a minute going through their shark unit. Now we build a unit that does 3,000 gallons. So, and it's better, better all the time. You know, we learned by trial and error and we continually tried out. You, yeah, the shark. I remember that from your website. It's the shark. That's the name of the, so, so a larger building requires a larger unit. And the one we're looking at right now, how big a building is that? Well, that will do probably four or 500,000 square feet. That's quite something. Now, we also build a smaller unit, we call a piranha. We love the fish names for some reason. So we have one that'll do right down to 25 apart. My plan is to have a smaller one that'll do a single household and run on solar power. And I want to have that out next few years. Yeah, let's just review that possibility. In that case, you're not buying any electricity or heat. You have it all coming from the solar system. And then this will make the solar system that much more efficient by retaining the heat of the cold within the same, the container of that house. So this is like the perfect world when you put them together. Absolutely. And that's my goal is to be really green. As you can tell, I'm not exactly a 20 year old. So I don't have a 20 year plan anymore, but I have a very good five year plan. That's correct. Well, what do you want to do? What is that plan, Lynn? What will that look like? I want to have international wastewater be a truly sustainable company from top to bottom. So we want to have a group of young employees that can keep for their lifetime, be fulfilled and happy and productive. So we have some lofty goals. And every job has got a time stamp. So mine include, so anybody who's qualified could have any job. We haven't found it to be crazy enough to want my job, but I'm sure the day will come. I'm sure they'll be around. So what kind of maintenance does the equipment require? You mentioned earlier that once in a while, they do break. How do they break? And what do you have to do to prevent them from breaking? Well, as you can imagine, Jay, working in the sewer system with wipes and paper and coats and bricks and things that come down, regular maintenance is the key. It's not a high tech maintenance, but it has to be regularly performed. So we go once a year, we basically put all new parts in the shark. And then three times a year, we come in and check everything. So it's plan maintenance. We're so confident in the ability to service the human. We will give a 20-year fixed contract on the cost of service. Oh, that's great. So as you can see, it's done by manual maintenance by hand. It's very low tech. Now, what about, you know what, the thought does occur to me, and I think we need to cover this, is when you design something like this and you realize that it's so efficient, so effective, and has such great possibilities around the world, I'm hoping you have, I'm assuming you have some intellectual property on it, some patents. What have you got, Lynn? We have an international patent on the shark system itself. So oddly enough, Jay, though, there's not a lot of people racing into the business. Wait, wait until they find out, then they'll be interested. We have one competitor in Europe, and oddly enough, kind of our guys eat corn, can't figure it out. Sometimes low tech is elusive, you know. Yeah, you know, it takes a simple kind of farmer like me to pretty understand it. But we have, we have won numerous, numerous major international awards, so we're very pleased with our technology. That's great. Now, you haven't mentioned Asia that I caught, and I wonder if this is, this would be of interest, I'm sure it would be of interest. For example, in Japan, in Korea, and certainly in China, because they're interested in, you know, efficiency too. Have you had any nibbles from that direction? Well, we actively don't go to that market. Everything I've ever seen you take into their beach out of there and ruin your market, so we have no plans to go into Asia. Okay. Well, you'll see what happens. Now, what about manufacturing? Do you manufacture this in your plant in Vancouver? You said that each one has its own sort of custom design, but how do you get the pieces together? And are there pieces that can be manufactured in a central location? Well, we tend to buy a few parts from suppliers, but the vast majority of we manufacture in Vancouver, Leicester, England, and Malibu and Australia. The shark itself is built in Canada here, the rest of it we put together in other places. So interesting that you're doing this. Well, I wish you well. I think this is a fabulous design. You know, at first you wonder about, you know, getting heat through sewage, but the reality is it goes both ways, and it's a great technology you've found, and this sounds like it's exactly what the world needs. And I'm happy to have you here to showcase you on ThinkTech Tech Talks so we can learn more about it. And I hope we can check back with you in some months or a year and find out how you're realizing this dream, Lynn. Oh, thanks, Jay. And, you know, I really think the world is warming up, and if we could just reuse a third of the heat, I wouldn't like it. There you go. It's connected to global climate change and all that. It's the story of a hot product exchanging heat. You know what I'd like to suggest to you, Jay, is next time you want to do an interview, I'll come to Hawaii and they'll do it live at the studio. There you go. I'm going to make a note of that. Lynn Muller from Wastewater Heat Recovery. Thank you so much. Aloha.