Charcoal may be UH gold mine
By Bev Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
Michael Antal pours a heap of blackened macadamia nut shells out of a Ziploc bag. They clatter and smear his fingers black before he stows them back among blackened kukui nut shells and rice husks.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
These, he said solemnly, are the future.
Michael Antal, left, and Lloyd Paredes work at UH, where Antal has developed a technology to turn green waste into charcoal that can be used to grow orchids and as fuel.
From a University of Hawai'i Engineering Building laboratory, the Harvard-trained physicist has developed a technology he says could revolutionize orchid growing and Huli-Huli chicken cooking, not to mention generate wealth for the University of Hawai'i and help reduce O'ahu's reliance on landfills.
Antal has figured out how to make a better charcoal from grass clippings and other green waste that is routinely thrown away. Instead of costing UH $10,000 to dispose of, green waste will net the university $100,000 a year, which Antal called just a fraction of its potential.
The technology can be sold to the rest of the world and used to turn all of O'ahu's green waste into a product with dozens of uses, potentially as lucrative as oil.
In a world of diminishing oil reserves, charcoal is considered an important energy source for the future. Like coal and oil, which Hawai'i imports for most of its energy needs, charcoal is a high-energy fuel, but cleaner and less polluting.
"The coal industry alone is a $100 billion industry, and it could be replaced by charcoal. And the university could get in on it, if it wants to," said Antal, the Coral Industries professor of renewable energy resources at the Hawai'i Natural Energy Institute at UH. "This is just waiting to happen."
Meanwhile, Antal is pushing forward with something that can be profitable immediately: the $50,000 purchase of a commercial autoclave to burn the university's green waste, creating a high-grade charcoal that can be sold to orchid farmers as a preferred potting medium and to barbecue operations as a fuel.
"This is a small miracle," he said. "The university could net about $100,000 a year just operating this machine one day a week."
If that much income can be generated using one small machine for eight hours, imagine running it 24-7, he said, and burning all the green waste he can get.
Antal is concerned that it will take two or more years before the university can see big profits from selling the technology, because patents have to be acquired.
Richard Cox, associate director of the Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development, said patents would be filed in the next couple of months.
With the autoclave ordered and space available next to the Pacific Ocean Science and Technology building for installation, the university will be marketing charcoal by fall. Antal's process of dehydrating mac nut shells, rice husks, corn cobs and other woody waste more than doubles the yield using other processes while reducing production from 10 days to 30 minutes.
Longtime Waikane orchid farmer Ken Neifert is growing orchids in UH charcoal made from mac nuts, which allows for good drainage, stimulates growth and remains stable during the long growing season. He likes what he sees.
"It has always been a preferred medium by many growers," he said of the perfect-size charcoal. "It would be a pretty big deal if we could get it."
Orchid growers currently import peat moss and fir park, which break down. Charcoal has the added ability to filter pollutants out of the soil as it enhances growth.
"We have high hopes," said UH extension agent Ed Mersino of the Department of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. "It's very stable compared to other materials.
"One of the advantages of charcoal is it's a local source and a reliable source. And it would be cheaper for the farmers.
Growers once used charcoal, he said, but it comes in big chunks and is expensive to break up.
UH soil scientist Mikitu Habte is testing charcoal's ability to improve growth by enhancing the relationship between soil fungi and plant. "There is potential for this relationship to be enhanced with charcoal," Habte said. "We're trying to get the funding to do the research."
Also, he said, returning green waste to the soil in the form of charcoal will reduce global warming. "If you add the green waste (biomass) materials directly into the soil, they will decompose and release carbon dioxide, and that contributes to global warming. So instead we convert this agricultural plant waste to charcoal, and then put it in the soil, and it reduces the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere."
With a multitude of uses for the charcoal, Antal hopes to see the university set up working relationships with small local companies using "any number of business strategies."
He sees tremendous potential to make charcoal from Christmas trees, corn cobs, yard clippings. "Even the ironwood trees proliferating on abandoned sugar cane land make an excellent charcoal."
The Huli-Huli chicken industry offers additional potential, because it now imports charcoal from Mexico. Restaurants also would be interested, he said.
Antal began working on building a reactor for biomass in the mid-1980s, after a request from a colleague in Thailand for ways to improve charcoal yields to slow down the loss of native forests.
"We've been working steadily ever since," he said. "It's only in the last year that we discovered some tricks that will really open the door for us."
Reach Bev Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
