 It's Wednesday, and you all know what day that is. It's Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And I'm your host today, Mitchell, and I'm really happy to have Richard Ha, my guest. And normally we talk about other things like oil and peak oil and things like that. Although we did do one on face masks, homemade face masks, and this is kind of a carry-on from that. We're going to talk about air filters today, mobile air filters. And Richard's got the latest and greatest news on this type of technology, which is available from everywhere, but how we can use it to combat COVID-19. So welcome to the show, Richard. Hey, aloha. Aloha. So just give a quick 60,000-foot view of why are we talking about air filters? I mean, I thought this is all kind of pretty standard stuff, but what's new and why are we talking about it and what's the interest here? Yeah. The reason it's new is because the CDC issued a directive on October 5th, which was just last week. Right. If everybody remembers when Dr. Fauci came and talked to Lieutenant Governor Green, that was the day after the CDC. And essentially what the CDC said was that they recognized that the virus spreads by air as well as by big droplets that fall at your feet by six feet. So as soon as they said that, it opened it up because it's basically saying that you got to worry about what's floating around in the air now. Prior to that, nobody did anything in that direction. Right. So first, we went face-mass to take off the big chunks, if I can characterize it that way. And now we find out that there's still a very fine aerosol out there and that certain types of just normal off-the-shelf air purifiers can combat that. So maybe could you go in a little bit more detail about that? I mean, I may be glossing it over. It's just not any kind of air purifier, but talk to us about the technology. Yeah, but the real issue is that 40 to 45 percent of the folks that are spreading the virus don't have symptoms. In other words, we don't know and they don't know they have symptoms. Right. And so when they're sitting in a room indoor space, we don't know who we're sitting next to. So these portable air purifiers, and it's really important to note that I'm talking about portable air purifiers. We're not talking about air conditioning or central air. We're just talking about portable air purifiers. And the portable air purifiers, that's what they do. They remove virus-sized particles from the air. And they're pretty efficient at it. I mean, they get up to 90-something, 99 percent as long as and you know, the better ones do a complete cycle in about 10 minutes. You know, like if you get one that's sized for a room 500 square feet, every 10 minutes, it goes through the filter and removes whatever goes through. And so that is the big deal. Then after that, okay, if we know that, then what do we do about it? Right. Yeah. And how do we look at it? You know, one way to look at it is to say, you know what, the CDC just made this announcement. The WHO heard the scientists, you know, bringing it to their attention and they just noted it. They didn't say anything more. They acknowledged it and didn't say anything more. The CDC, on the other hand, did say that it does, yes, it does, are transferred by air. Right. So that's what we're looking at. And so now why are we looking at schools? Right. And the reason we're looking at schools is because a recent study in India, 500,000 people contact tracing, they found that a lot of this spreading is by young people from kids to college age, somewhere around there. Right. And this is the first time they actually detected that. So if that is the case, then our question is what do we do about it? Because if we know that, what are we going to do about it? Right. One way of looking at it is to say, you know, prior to the CDC's last guidance, we were operating on what the old one was. And the old one was, you know, they didn't say they spread by air. And droplets and, I'm sorry, spread by air. And it could hang in the air for a long time. It did not say anything like that. Right. So if we use the U.S. mainland as an example of what life was like under the old rules. Right. We know that there's a whole bunch of people that got sick in adult care centers. Yeah, life, right. Yeah. And we know that in some jails, there's been huge amounts of infection. Yeah. And the CDC, because now that they acknowledge that, they're telling people to be very careful about indoor air. And the reason I am especially concerned is because they're discouraging people from going into restaurants. Right. And the issue really is, you know, we've got to help those restaurants make money, because they're just barely hanging on. And why I'm concerned is because I'm a farmer. The restaurants buy food for farmers. They buy their products from the farmers. So it's all tied together, yeah. Right. Big systems engineering approach to it, but there's all sorts of leverage. Like you said, restaurants have to get their nice fresh food from somebody. That's got to do with the farmers, you know, exactly. So how can a restaurant address this? I mean, part of it, first, before you say that, I mean, tell us a little bit about your organization and why you guys are taking this on. Well, you know, sustainable energy, Hawaii, is about energy. Yeah, right. So, and we know that fossil fuels are declining and we know that we've got to prepare. And then we're talking about climate change and declining fossil fuel. And we've known that for a long time, 10 years. And it's been a slow thing. We're watching it. And then all of a sudden the pandemic hit. And now that's still in the background, but we got to take care of this first. And that's why sustainable energy, Hawaii, no matter, you know, in spite of the fact that our primary purpose is energy. Another way of looking at it is food is the primary source of energy, not oil. Right. It's food. So if we start to think about the bigger picture, maybe we got to start to consider and put food growing in the same category as energy, same input. Right. So, okay. Anyway, I'm getting curious. My question before I kind of got us off a little bit off track is, so what, for example, can a restaurant do? I mean, what's kind of the, what's the solution here? You have an example of a restaurant that's taking the initiative and doing that. So maybe you want to tell us what they're doing as a model of how we can address this. You know, Peter Merriman's Waimea restaurant, they've committed. Yeah, they've committed to install air purifiers. And, you know, like Peter Merriman, you know, he thinks far in advance and he understands, you know, so he just jumped out there in front. And how far in front, he's even installing small purifiers in the restaurant. Because even in the CDC instruction, they refer to that as a possible way of transmitting, but they talk about suicide. So he took it upon himself and said, you know, why not just to be safe? That's, that's, that's what's happening. And he's going to be a really great example of what the Hawaii Restaurant Association probably needs to do. And the reason for it is because, like, like I said, the CDC, if you read through it, it looks like it's discouraging people from going into indoor spaces like that. So if we have portable air purifiers in those spaces, the job of the air purifier is to lower the virus load in the air. So, you know, you can, you can, you can do all the things that they recommend, you know, but there's studies that show that downwind of how the air conditioning is going to air, you can transmit the virus from, from one table to the next table to the next table. Just by the way the air is moving. And that's why air purifiers strategically set up, can mitigate that. So how big a, how big a volume can one air purifier, I know they come in different sizes, but approximately, how many, you know, I've been to Merrimans you have, so how many kind of, how many of these purifiers do you think it might take to provide that for, for them? Or, or a classroom, you know, kind of size room? Yeah, so, so an example would be Kyokaha Elementary School. They took it upon themselves to go ahead and equip the whole school with portable air purifiers. And what they did was they took consumer reports and used that as a way to analyze which ones they would get. And they, they took the third highest rated air purifier for about 500 square feet. Okay. And then what they did was they, they used that one size for every single one of their rooms that they're, they're gonna cover. But, but in some cases, like most classrooms are like around 700 square feet. Right. Instead of having one small and a big one, one big one, they got two big ones. Right. Now they over, over strengthened it, or, you know, which is, which I thought was really good because now, sure, you've got more redundancy, you've got more ability for the people who know what's going on, like the teachers to position the air purifiers. So, so, so the answer to your question was that they took a purifier that can do 500 square feet. It cost $250 landed on the big island. And it rotates the air every 10 minutes. Right. So that's, that's what they did. And it was based on the consumer reports. Okay. So how are they paying for it, Richard? Well, in this particular case, they knew, they knew that this, you know, before the CDC instructions came up, we all knew that they was airborne. So they took it upon themselves to go and fix it. And that's how they decided. This is kind of like grassroots, like, okay, we're not absolutely. You wouldn't believe what happened. You know, so we were thinking. Yeah. So, so we were thinking along these lines for a long time. Yeah. I mean, it's a continuation from the masks. Yeah. It's the same kind of the principle, just understanding what, what makes common sense. So we, we came to the conclusion, gee, wouldn't it be something if we started a program to get a school as an example. So it just so happened that when I call Kulu Stacey Bello, so the principal of the school, she was thinking of it, because she had installed air conditions for all the classrooms. And then she was thinking that she needed to have air purifiers to meet the, the standards that was passed down to, to, to accommodate the air condition. So when I called her, she was on the same page. We were all on the same page. Right. But what is pretty amazing was that it took us two weeks from idea to implementation. How in the world can you do that in Hawaii? Tell us. Hey, it was so simple. So the, the persons involved were myself, Stacey Bello, and Jeremy McCumber, who was the president of the, the associate, the nonprofit attached to the school. So he was the guy that says, you know what we should do? We should do a GoFundMe program. Right. And then we talked about it. And then, you know, we kind of said, what if you did eight GoFundMe programs? Like one for the preschool, one for kindergarten and one to six. So there's eight of them, right? Right. So they have a template of all the different room sizes. So it's easy to figure them out. And then it came out to a total of $20,000. So $20,000 divided by eight comes out to $2,500. And you can adopt one of the classes. Oh, cool. What a great idea. Pretty, pretty unreal. I mean, that's how fast it went, you know, two weeks from idea to implementation. And now they've raised more than $7,000. Right. Yeah. So two of the classes. Yeah, kind of, you know, and there's some more coming, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. So that's what they did. And they weren't going to wait for anybody. They were just going to go do it. So that's, but now we're talking about, gee, maybe we should do this for the whole, all the classrooms on the island. Right. And that's where your question about CARES funding. So we will go and apply for CARES funding. So I know you're the guest, but I'm going to come up with an idea. Like, so my friend, Dave Donald, who you've met, is an, you know, he's an Amway distributor and Amway has this really kind of rocket science air, air cleaner, mobile air cleaner, like you're talking about. But the thing I, and I bought two of them because I needed them in, you know, my house. And the thing I liked about it is you could dial in on the internet and it measures how well the filters are doing it. It has, it has all the three different types of filters. So you could do that with the, with the classroom. If you've got a smart air filter system, you could actually monitor them because one of the big issues I find is that people don't maintain things. You turn it on, then you leave it running forever. But at some point you're going to have to change the filters out. And so what this does is it tells you when you need that, you know, how much life you have left in your filter. So maybe, you know, you get the school and you hook it all up to like a centralized computer that, you know, you put in some alarm bells when it gets to a certain point. So, you know, when you have to, you know, change up the filters because the thing is not, you know, not doing as well as it could. So just an idea. Yeah, no, absolutely. Because that, that you have to make sure that you, you change it on time or when it needs to be changed, absolutely. But I wanted to make clear that our group Sustainable Energy Hawaii is trying to implement this thing, but we don't want to own it. We want to help people get it going, help get the funding, and then once they're on their way, then we go back to our original machine, you know, which is Hikichin. There you go. Good man. That's why I like you so much, Richard. So how are you spreading the word? I mean, obviously, you're going to use our Think Tech Hawaii show because you're going to get a YouTube video. So let's make sure we cover all the points and then you can spread it out to your network. But what other, how else can we get the word out, get the buzz out? You know, next week, I'll be on a panel discussion talking about agriculture. Right. And it's going to be an unconventional way of looking at things. Right. It takes energy to do work. And actually, there's there's two things going on, like I said at the start. We have the climate change and fossil fuel decline. We know that's coming. And yet at the same time, we have this pandemic that we got to take care of immediately and effectively, because we cannot afford to have a shutdown. And we're probably the most dependent on tourism of all the states. Right. So the potential downside for us, if you don't do this right, it's pretty serious. So I didn't answer your question. Yeah. So I think the hotels would be another target for this kind of technology. It's pretty simple technology. Yes. Yes. It's very, you know, and so it really comes down to the making the air we share safe. And generally, it's an indoor area. So what the air purifiers do is it removes the that's what it does. It removes the virus particles from the air. And if we're lucky, it raises it up high enough where it might not transmit. Right. Yeah. So if that is the case, I mean, you dilute it enough. Yes, it gets through. It's just like little tiny things in your immune system can handle it. You're not you're not getting a big load of virus in your body all at once. That's the whole point. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And that hasn't been in effect anywhere. But this is the first time that that we're thinking about it. It's a new thing. And but we got to get everybody covered, you know, like, like, let's say, okay, we got to get the jails covered, we got to get the adult care places covered, restaurants, you know, gyms, you know, stuff like that, plus all the indoor spaces that make sense. Yeah. Sure. Like, even in the airports themselves, we're going to have a system spread around. Yeah. And really what you're hoping for, and I want to be sure that we're not promising anything, but we're thinking, gee, what happened if the air filtration is affected enough to raise it up where the virus cannot hide anymore? Right. You know, because asymptomatic is why we're having such a hard time, we can't see the virus. But this is a way to eliminate or lessen the load to your point. Yeah. Okay. So what about the Department of Education? I mean, now here's, here's a grassroots experiment going on in one of their schools. Are you planning to take it to the, you know, the Board of Education and say, look, guys, I mean, this is a pretty low cost way to keep that cakey safe. And the teachers, of course. Yeah. Yeah, no, we are right. Right. So it's early days and we're pushing really hard because it just happened, yeah, the CDC. So absolutely, what you're saying, we're going to have the conversation with the Department of Education. But you know, we're engaging the folks here on this island, you know, the complex area, superintendent that is in charge of all the schools. Right. We're talking to them actively. So, and they're on board. They know that, you know, and like I mentioned, you know, the study in India shows that kids spread it from young, young, young children to, to, you know, college age and stuff like that. They spread it to each other. Yeah. So, so, so if we can protect the kids in the school so that if they don't spread it, because you, the child can come in and be a symptomatic spreader, nobody would know the person, the kid would just sit in the room. When we do this, we give ourselves a chance of defending it from spreading to others kids to send back to their family. That's what the deal is here. So I think I would think the Hawaii Tourism Association and the rest, I think they have a restaurant association too. I thought I saw something of the news recently. I mean, you know, all these kinds of associations would appear to be good targets, like you educate them at the top level. And then we wanted to spread virally. Yes. As many businesses as possible, you know, so that they can put this stuff in place and be proactive. And we're not talking a lot of money here. No, no, no, no. You know, to give you an idea of how much money we're talking about, you know, taking Kyo Kaha Elementary School and the data we got from there. So basically they have 400 students at that school and it costs 20,000. That means $50 a person. God. So there's 24,000 students in the, in the DOE system. That's about 1.2 million. Right. This chicken feed for, for what Department of Health, State Department of Health is sitting on tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. And I want to be clear yet that it's not anybody's fault. They just change and they want to respond to the change really fast. Yeah. Well, I'm looking at who's got the big pots of gold so we can go that much faster, you know. It takes time to do a crowdsource. I mean, you got to get it out there. People have to do the thing and then you have to buy the equipment. Whereas, you know, if we can go in there with a big pot of gold and, you know, buy a massive amount of these things and bring them into Hawaii and then you can distribute it faster. Yeah. And you know, because of Kyo Kaha Elementary, the Department of Hawaii Energy is giving rebates because of the efficiency. Right. Because these are energy saver kinds of. Oh, I'm not kidding. So, and they're also interested to see if people buy a big load, they can get a discount from, from the company. But that's a higher level than me. It's going to have to be the Department of Education and all that stuff to decide. I was in Costco the other day and I see that they're selling these kinds of mobile air filtration systems. They look a lot like the ones that Amway had. Next time I go to Costco, I'll check them out further. I guess I could just go online to Costco and check them out and see what their, you know, what the technology is there. Yeah. And to be clear about our position is that we are using consumer reports and that, those kinds of third party to, because you know how it is, it's marketing and promotion. Yeah. You just, people can say anything about anything. Right. So, what are some of the, what kind of messages do you want to leave? We got about five or six minutes left in our, in our show today. So, what have we missed? Amway Tourism Authority. Okay. We want to, we want to have a meeting with them, you know, from John DeFries, you know, Donald, and, and then just talk story, because, and then just talk story, because, you know, and encourage them, you know what, you'll be good if you guys put some money in Kyoko Elementary, adopt on class. Right. Adopt the class. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, but more than that, you know, it's to talk about the tourism industry and how they can fit in and how it's, it needs to be, it needs to be safe and economical at the same time. Yeah. So, we can have that discussion. Yes. And then, and the other thing is sharing data. So, like, particularly if, you know, some of these, I mean, I don't know about the ones they've already installed, but if you get these ones that, you know, you can monitor online, then you're going to get a lot of data out of it. Yeah. You know, what I have, you can tell when it starts and stops and how fast the fan runs. So, you know, you get this graph that goes up and down, up and down, and you can tell exactly what's going on and when it's doing its air chain and it senses itself when it needs to be run. I don't know how the heck they do that, but it does. And it tells you how dirty the air is at the same time. It measures the amount of stuff that's in the air. Yeah. That's all good stuff. And then it comes out to how much does it cost, yeah. Right. Well, this one was kind of expensive. It was about $1,200. Now, that was like, two or three years ago now. And so, you know, they've probably gone down by quite a lot. You know, so the consumer reports, the number one rated for the given space was about $800. The number two was $300. Number three, which Kyokoha Elementary Guard was $250. They essentially did the same amount of moving of air. There's a lot of, they might be gadgets and all of this stuff, but as far as filtering the air, that's how they decided. So, what about going to our congressional delegation? And also, if we've got the politicals involved, do we have our reps, you know, our senators and our local reps, like Rep Lawan and Rep Nakashima? Have they been brought in? Yeah. So, we haven't reached out to them just yet, but we will, as soon as we get this, you know, like this video and go on the next program. And, you know, we're working with Peter Merriman to do a press release about their opening and why and stuff like that. So, then we'll, and we don't have time yet. I mean, every week is fine. So, we've got to do everything which is what you're pointing out. Yeah, exactly. You've got to ramp it up because, you know, if especially the tourists start coming back into town, you know, this is like being really proactive. And like you said, we need to get going. We can't just sit around and talk about it. And I love the fact who will, you know, really got after it. Thanks to your organization, to jump on top of it. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's what you've got to do. Well, believe it or not, Richard, we've blown through 30 minutes and time to wrap it up. So, first of all, I'd like to really thank you a lot for coming on the show at short notice. I'd also like to thank Sustainable Energy Hawaii for taking this initiative, this grass root support to solve an immediate problem to help Hawaii, all of us here in Hawaii. So, well done for doing that. Appreciate it. When you get the video, use it as a tool. Remember, you hear it here first on Think Tech Hawaii. So, that's, I'm going to sign off now. And thank you very much, Richard. And this is Mitchell Yuan signing off from Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And we'll see you next Wednesday. Aloha.