Infrastructure
The physical layer of Project EPOCH: filter arrays designed to intercept pollution at the reef face, modular biorefineries designed to convert harvested invasive biomass into commercial products, and a prioritization model for the upstream cesspool retrofits that close the source.
Detection without remediation is just diagnosis.
Pillars 01 and 02 are structured to produce the diagnostic and decision-making layer. They are designed to identify what is harming each reef, where it comes from, and what to do next. Pillar 03 is the physical layer that does the doing.
Without remediation hardware, source attribution is just an indictment that no one acts on. Without a biorefinery, the invasive biomass harvested in the process becomes its own waste problem. Without a route to upstream source closure, the same filter arrays run on the same reef forever. The infrastructure pillar exists to close all three of those gaps in one operational system.
Bioremediation filter arrays are designed to sit upstream of reef framework, removing the contaminants identified by Pillar 01 source attribution before they reach coral.
Harvested invasive macroalgae will pass through containerized biorefineries that convert it into food-grade hydrocolloids, bio-based filaments, and process residuals. The operating revenue is structured to fund the next year of the program.
A prioritization model is designed to rank the 88,000 cesspools statewide by reef impact per dollar of retrofit cost. Government partners will execute the construction; the program contributes the intelligence.
A 40-foot container that turns invasive algae into product.
Each biorefinery unit is a 40-foot ISO shipping container with a 20 to 30 m² evacuated-tube solar thermal array on the roof, designed for one tonne of dry algae per day. By design, harvested invasive macroalgae from the reef-face filter arrays comes in one end and finished commercial products come out the other. The waste stream is roughly zero.
Unit 1 Kāneʻohe Bay (Year 2), Unit 2 Maunalua Bay (Year 3), Unit 3 Waikīkī (Year 4).
Gracilaria salicornia for the agar pathway. Kappaphycus alvarezii and Eucheuma spp. for the carrageenan pathway.
Solar thermal for process heat. Photovoltaics for milling. Biogas micro-CHP for recovery from anaerobic digestion.
By design, the cascade has three phases.
Inbound biomass passes a NIR composition check and an X-ray fluorescence metals screen. Species are sorted into the agar and carrageenan trains. Passive solar drying then takes biomass from roughly 85 to 15 percent moisture in 24 to 36 hours under tropical conditions (Fuentes et al., 2021), at effectively zero kilowatt-hours per tonne.
Solar-thermal heating drives water-only extraction of carrageenan and agar. No chemical solvents enter the process. Published yields for hot-water carrageenan extraction sit between 72 and 79 percent (Villanueva et al., 1994), against a 40 to 60 percent carrageenan content in Kappaphycus dry weight (Hayashi et al., 2007). Polymer processing into bio-based filament for fused deposition modeling follows.
What is not extracted as polymer is split into protein meal, mineral concentrate, and cellulose nanofibers. Anything still left digests anaerobically into biogas, which runs a micro combined-heat-and-power unit. Digestate becomes biofertilizer. Three additional revenue streams from biomass that would otherwise be a disposal problem.
By design, process neutralization is handled by a biochar-buffered column. Biochar feedstock comes from algae waste pyrolyzed on-site, which closes the loop on the loop. Process water passes through a microalgae raceway that strips remaining nitrogen and phosphorus to WHO standards before discharge.
Four layers, one cascade.
Filter arrays are designed to sit upstream of reef framework, oriented perpendicular to each site's dominant current vector. Layer composition is keyed to the published Hawaiʻi pollutant priority ranking: dissolved inorganic nitrogen first, diuron second, oxybenzone third, copper fourth, with phosphate co-captured throughout. Each layer is built from a distinct material that targets a specific class of contaminant.
A maintained curtain of invasive macroalgae (Gracilaria salicornia, Kappaphycus alvarezii, Eucheuma spp.) biouptakes nitrogen as the contaminant flow passes through. Harvest cycles every 14 to 21 days return the layer to working capacity and route the harvested biomass into the modular biorefinery as feedstock.
Adsorption panels built from biochar bonded with carrageenan capture the diuron, oxybenzone, and copper that pass the biological layer. The composite formulation is proprietary.
Clinoptilolite zeolite panels exchange residual ammonium ions out of the water column, completing the dissolved-nitrogen capture begun by Layer 1.
Aragonite carriers pre-colonized with reef-native bacterial biofilm provide a final biological polish, and contribute structural substrate that integrates with the reef framework downstream.
DCA, the mineralization intermediate of diuron, is reef-toxic.
Every filter configuration must be mesocosm-validated under site-specific water chemistry to confirm complete DCA mineralization before it goes anywhere near a reef. This step is non-negotiable, and it is the central reason the layer compositions are kept proprietary.
A chronic-threshold trigger is designed to begin biofilm pre-conditioning for Layer 4 between 30 and 60 days before forecast bleaching risk, so the biological polish is alive and active when needed. An acute-threshold trigger then deploys the array.
Every spent filter component is designed to either biodegrade into reef-native compounds or return to a biorefinery stage as feedstock. No synthetic material is introduced to the reef at end of service.
Where does the next dollar of nitrogen reduction go furthest?
Hawaiʻi has roughly 88,000 active cesspools statewide. Replacing all of them is technically feasible and politically committed, but the work happens over decades and budgets. The order in which the retrofits occur has a large effect on how quickly downstream reefs recover.
The Project EPOCH prioritization model is designed to rank each cesspool by its nitrogen contribution to a downstream reef multiplied by that reef's ecological sensitivity, then divide by retrofit cost. The output is a queue, ordered by dollars per kilogram of nitrogen reduced, that government partners can execute against.
Hawaiʻi Department of Health cesspool database. Submarine groundwater discharge transport model from Pillar 01. GIS ecological value index from Pillar 02.
A ranked queue of cesspool retrofits, ordered by reef-impact gain per dollar of construction cost.
The program contributes the prioritization. Replacement and retrofit construction is the work of government partners and licensed contractors.