 Welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy, our Energy Wednesday show. I'm Maria Tome, co-hosting with Mitch Ewen from the University of Hawaii, and we have a special guest today, Dennis Furukawa with Hawaii Green Power. So welcome, and I think Mitch, you can kick us off with a little description of what we're in for today. Yeah. I'd like to do that. One of the things I wanted to do when I invited Dennis here was to highlight the University of Hawaii technologies that are solving Hawaii problems today. Because I think the perception with many people is that the University of Hawaii does all these esoteric research projects, and you know, how does it affect me? Yeah. Well, the projects that Dennis are working on help the everyday person, and they save money for Hawaii, and they take care of one of our biggest problems, which is, how do we support the homeless people here in Hawaii? So what I like to do is turn it over to Dennis, and first of all, Dennis, just give us a quick thumbnail of your background and a little bit of history on real green power. Okay. So my background is I've got 20 plus years as an architect, and I really started focusing on really trying to solve environmental problems. And I came to Hawaii with an idea of trying to solve water pollution that was coming out of ag, and there was technology available at UH that was specifically treating dairy wastewater. And so I sponsored some research at UH to convert the pollution in the agricultural wastewater from dairy and from sugar mills, and specifically to find a way to generate some sort of economic benefit, which actually that methodology was through renewable energy. So anaerobic digestion produces methane, which can be used to produce electric power. So we don't want to just be a couple of talking heads here. So Dennis brought some slides, which will help illustrate his technology. So can we beam up the first slide? Okay. There's the opening logo, and take it away, Dennis. All right. Our first installation was actually taking brewery wastewater, which you can see in that lagoon there. It is a, that is actually coming straight out of a brewery in Northern California. And we digested that, do you think you can advance the slide? No, he'll do it. Oh. Right. So the outcome is both clean water, and so if there's an image on the bottom, you can see that there's raw wastewater from the lagoon. It's that orange, and then sort of the intermediate step. And then the final step is that clear water on the right. And then coming out of the system is a constant stream of methane, which I just took a picture of. Normally, it's going into a water heater, so you couldn't see it. So I just, you know, I ignited it. The blue flame is actually indicative of a very clean gas. So rather than, for instance, like landfill gas, you'll have a lot of orange in it. The blue gas is actually a product of a very high carbon content, which then produces a very good, rich, yeah, fill gas. Next. So what we did is we spent three or four years focusing on adapting that technology for treating domestic wastewater. And then at the East Honolulu wastewater treatment plant, we were able to show that we could reduce the energy usage in treating that wastewater by 50%. But more importantly, we could reduce the amount of sludge, so the actual sewage solids that are produced through that processing, the normal sewage treatment processing by 85%. So that led us to being able to package this system in a way that we could actually put it close to habitation, because the main issue that you have is what do you do with the sewage solids? And what you often have is either like an incinerator, but more commonly, you'll have like a sludge drying bed, which is like a very smelly and, you know, flies are associated with and whatnot. But our process actually doesn't involve any sludge drying. We actually produce such a small amount of sludge that we can just vacuum it out of our system and truck it away. So going back to the images, we are focused on the issue of homelessness as well as refugee camps. And typically those, while those refugee camps and homeless camps are placed in areas that aren't served by electricity or water. So it becomes a very costly situation in just handling the amount of sewage that's involved, both in just like toilets, but also from showers. And the city and county opened up a homeless facility on Sand Island. It was a couple of years ago, and the homeless or the clients, about 80 persons there, plus some staff, the costs that were, that they were running up to handle the amount of waste water that they were dealing with was costing about $30,000 a month. And that homeless facility was actually designed to serve 120 people. So we got involved, we contacted city and county and said that, you know, we think that we could reduce the costs and provide actually superior facilities than what they were doing. Basically what they had were, you know, the blue porta-potties, and then a trailer that had showers in it, and all of that was just hooked up to essentially septic tanks. And those septic tanks needed to be vacuumed out like every day. So our approach was to put on onsite wastewater treatment system that will allow us to irrigate landscaping or even some crops with that wastewater. So the upshot is that rather than spending $30,000 a month, our system is costing them about $5,000 a month. Wow, that's a big difference. And that's really, you know, pretty much just the cost of, you know, overseeing and operating that system and just, you know, keeping an eye on it. There's very little that needs to be removed, so it's highly efficient. And the system itself runs predominantly on solar energy. One of the things that we don't have enough solar energy in what we installed in is actually to provide hot water. But interestingly enough, in Hawaii here, people aren't interested in a hot shower so much. And so we put water heaters in there and everybody was complaining that it was too hot. Oh. It's kind of funny. So if you can, you know, remove the energy that's used for hot water from the thing, our entire system runs on essentially six solar panels for eight bathrooms. Wow. So do you use the methane? Well actually, our system, we've tuned it to avoid actually the production of methane. The methane itself becomes like a bit of a problem. And so this is actually, you know, part of our improvements in the technology is that by avoiding methane, you actually speed up the degradation of the wastes. And our system uses a combination of anaerobic digestion as well as aerobic digestion. And the way that we've got it tuned, it avoids the bulk of the sludge that's produced from the aerobic processing of sludge, which is the traditional activated sludge method. So by reducing the amount of organics that are going into essentially the activated sludge process, you really minimize the amount of sludge that's generated through that. Wow. So do you have pictures of that? I don't actually have. I'm afraid to ask too many questions because I'm not sure what's proprietary. Well, for the most part, it's in the sealed tank. So I could, you know, there's, there's really, thankfully, because, you know, using sealed tanks eliminates the smell. Yeah. But yeah, so there's a lot of proprietary stuff inside those tanks. And the, and, you know, the system controls and whatnot. And the piping, they're all proprietary. Okay. So let's go to talk about, I guess, more logistical rather than the engineering side of things. So you approached the city and said, hey, let's try this. Does it support the whole camp? Is it a small part of it? How long did it take to put it in? Well, so if you know, I'm sure you do know about like procurement, right? Yeah. So it was a request for proposals and competing. So it was, it was a competitive, you know, selection process. Yeah. So we sort of opened the door saying, hey, you know, there is a, there is a better way. And so we had to compete with, for instance, like membrane technologies. So other, you know, effective technologies, but for the most part, you know, our approach was really geared towards producing the most amount of reusable water, eliminating the complexities involved with, you know, handling the sludge and, and then reducing the operating costs. And so as you probably know that, you know, membrane technologies take a lot of energy. And energy is expensive here in Hawaii. So it was a real leg up for us to just be able to essentially put a few solar panels on our system and just like let it fly. Yeah, excellent. Well, we need to take a quick break, but we'll be back in just a few, a few seconds here. So thank you and come back to listen to the second half of our meeting with Dennis Frukawa, co-hosted by Mitch Ewen on real green powers, projects and technologies developed at UH and benefiting our society, especially the homeless. Thanks. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Freedom. Is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? At DiveHeart, we believe freedom is all of these and more regardless of your ability. DiveHeart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, DiveHeart has helped children, adults and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. DiveHeart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search DiveHeart.org and share our mission with others and in the process help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on ThinkTechHawaii.com, 1 p.m. 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. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. Okay, welcome back to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Today we're talking about wastewater treatment systems that are much more energy efficient and produce less solid waste as well. And we have Dennis Furukawa with Real Green Power and my co-host, Mitch Ewan. So Mitch, I think we'd like to hear more about not only the project on the San Island, but something else that may even be in the works. Well, first of all, I'm not sure that we show the beauty shots of what the inside of the toilet compartments look like, so we have a couple of slides to show you why these people thought this was like a really nice deal. So pictures. Can we see a couple of those pictures please? There we go. So this indicates the juxtaposition between a blue port-a-potty and a gang shower. So what we're using there are very sleek French-made macerating toilets, which are able to push the sewage a pretty long distance into our sewage treatment process. And then separately, we've got the types of sinks with the faucets that are very high-efficiency, low flow, and a shower as well that is metered flow. So we were actually able to reduce the amount of water that was being used from, I think it was, 2,500 gallons a day down to about 700 or? That's a significant number. Just by energy-efficient, I mean water-efficient fixtures. So big, big differences. So a heck of a difference between what you see on the screen now and what a port-a-potty looks like. I think everybody would agree with that. You don't ever shadow that. Oh, okay. Exactly. Now we don't. So what's the next slide here? Right, so you can see that at the homeless encampment that everything is actually designed in shipping containers. So the images that you see, those are, so for every window that you see that represents a discrete sleeping quarters. So everybody has their own door and key. And down below you can see that this is actually something that was supported chiefly by Mayor Caldwell and the governor and the commissioners of the county commissioners, board of supervisors. And it's a project that's run by the Institute for Human Services and the Department of Human Services at the county level and state level, I'm sorry. But yeah, it was very well received. And so really a little bit more, there's a shot of the electrical system that powers the whole thing. So we've got essentially two lithium batteries, a charge controller and some inverters. It's very simple. It's actually still grid-connected. So I think we're using about two hours of electricity at night. So yeah. Well, thank you for that, seeing as how it's the Energy Wednesday show. It's always nice to get some, you know, little energy text. The next slides will show you a lot more energy. Yes. So how long has that system been running? It's been there since May. And it's scheduled, I think that they've got a four-year contract with the state. Oh, good. Good. Yeah. Okay, what's the next slide? I think this is the Kenya project. So this diagram here is really the focus of where we see sustainability. This is a sustainability diagram. And where we see real green power is at the center of that, at waste processing. And on the left-hand side that you see, there's farms. On the right-hand side, you see energy. The top, you see people. And the bottom, you see water. So water is integral to both farming and energy. And obviously, those two things are what people consume. And then so people generate waste, farms generate waste, energy, production generates waste. So if we can actually recycle all of those wastes, put it back into the water part of that equation, we can achieve sustainability. And so that's really our goal. And I think you... Next slide, please. So we're developing a project in central Oahu that it tries to achieve exactly that. So this is a project in central Oahu that was the former... Should we look at the diagram on the left first? The lower left, maybe? Yes. So if you can focus in on that. So this was the former Del Monte pineapple processing camp. And so it includes farm worker housing. There is a... In the center, it says WWTP, that's the sewage treatment plant. So wastewater treatment plant. Right, right. And there are businesses that are at this property. And we're developing greenhouses for hydroponics. The greenhouses have a component of solar energy, solar panels, that provide a certain amount of shading. So we produce renewable energy that would be going into both the grid that drives the business and agribusiness components. And we provide the space for farmers to produce food that are using, that are relying largely on recycled water. And food processing, agricultural food processing uses a tremendous amount of water. And it's actually one of the roadblocks to greater compliance with food safety here in Hawaii is actually a lack of access to sewage... For wastewater processing in the areas that... I mean, we don't have sewage treatment plants all over the place. Right, right. So the idea here is that by providing the necessary infrastructure for both the farming as well as the value-added activities of food processing, canning, even prepared foods, that we can create jobs and eliminate a lot of the waste. For instance, one of those food processing facilities generates waste that can be going back into either producing fodder for animals like pigs or chickens. And then the wastewater gets cleaned up and then it can be recycled. So this is a concept. How far along are you? We're actually under contract. Oh, it's a contract. We have land leases and we have power purchase agreements and we have subtenants. Right now we're preparing our interconnection agreements and our engineering. So we're on our way. So this is a different structure. It's got the farm aspect and the food production and the water and energy and water. Yeah, all connected. And the other thing is it's dual use of the land. Like when people put out these ground-mounted solar arrays, that's it. I mean, you can't do anything else with that land. And land is very precious here in Hawaii if we want to become self-sufficient in our food. So by solar above the greenhouse, that's dual use technology in the best possible form. So when do you think, I mean, the project like this is probably one that will go through a lot of growth and continue and change and develop for many years. But when do you think most of this will be in place? We're really shooting for having tenants in place and power generating by the end of next year. Really? Excellent. Yeah, so do you have? We're currently actually right now making the necessary modification to the wastewater treatment plant. That's really the first step. So we're doing that right now. So do you have, as Mitch had said in the previous one, beauty shots of any of the project? Well, really nothing that we can share. I can show you like the inside of the wastewater treatment plant. But that's not very beautiful. It depends on what you're. Okay, I guess there's one more graphic, one more diagram. So here we go. Well, this is actually getting down into the nitty gritty of really what's going on with that sustainability diagram. So it involves agriculture, essentially agricultural activities on the bottom, people on the top, and more industrial activities around on the sides with wastewater treatment right in the center. And if you do what's known as a mass balance for all the scientists and engineers out there, what we're trying to do is we're trying to minimize the loss of any mass by creating value from wastes and recycled aspects and the energy balance really goes hand in hand with that mass balance. This is really very interesting and I wish you a lot of success. I would like to actually give a shout out to that this was really developed with partners at H&EI at the university and we got a lot of support from Sultan Ventures and Accelerate UH and they really provided sort of the background for us to be focused on with the modular toilet systems but really the basic science. So is anybody writing up the description of this or if somebody, for example, we have a bunch of students who are doing a robotics program, the legal league topic, is into orbit talking about living in space and when you talk about a self-contained system and mass balance and being very aware of how everything works together, they might be interested in learning more. Is that available on your website or at H&EI or even the diagrams here? Are those available elsewhere? Do they get them from this show? I think you could take a look at our website so www.realgreenpower.com but in terms of sort of takeaways, curriculum, we actually haven't produced that. Well it's a middle school program so there's probably it's just about right at that level of detail. It's concepts. You know being excited about using our resources wisely and excited about technology contributing to solutions. So I think we're going to need to wrap it up really quickly. Do you have a last thing you'd like to leave with our listeners? Well you know I think that we all need to be really focused on our reliance on imported energy and food and in particular that has a real big carbon footprint and that's why I think we're focused in on the sustainability. It really can make a big, big difference in terms of global warming and especially more importantly just food safety. We need to achieve you know security so. If you have time. Yes so and last word Mitch. I'd just also like to acknowledge that the support we got from UH licensing from the office of technology development and economic development. I think they changed the name but OTED has been very very helpful, very easy to work with. They've been very supportive of this project so once again getting UH technology out there into the marketplace to support our citizens and solve their problems and that's what you know UH has not really I don't want to say they haven't advertised that a lot but that's this project is one of those projects where UH technology has relevance today to the community. I agree totally thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Thank you Maria. Thanks Mitch. Okay yeah and thank you for watching Think Tech Hoy.