The nation's leading manufacturer of charcoal has licensed a University of Hawai'i process for turning green waste into barbecue briquets.

Under terms of the deal, Oakland, Calif.-based Kingsford Products Co. obtains the rights to use UH's "flash carbonization" process to produce cooking charcoal. Flash carbonization, which was developed by Michael J. Antal Jr., a UH professor, uses heat and pressure to turn dehydrated corn cobs, rice husks and other green waste into charcoal in about 30 minutes, compared with other processes that can take as long as 10 days.

Kingsford now becomes the third company to license the technology, but the first with a household name that can generate exposure for the obscure technology.

"It's a very large and recognizable company. It opens a lot of doors," said Antal, who has been focusing on developing the technology since 2001 with money provided by the federal government, UH and the private sector.

Antal and the university hope to generate royalties from the technology, which along with other licensing deals could help UH become a hub of research activity that can spin off businesses, technologies and jobs. Royalties from UH discoveries are split among the inventor, the inventor's department and the university system.

While UH has made progress in increasing licensing income, officials admit more needs to be done. UH royalty income fell 13 percent to $899,000 in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2006, and likely fell further last year because the university has lost patent protection for a cancer detection antibody.

Deals such as the Kingsford license can help change that.

Details surrounding the month-old deal with Kingsford remain confidential, said Dick Cox, director of the UH Office of Technology Transfer.

"I can tell you that, yes, we have a license with Kingsford," he said. "It's very much a standard license agreement."

The technology sprang from a request by a colleague of Antal's to improve charcoal yields in Thailand to cut down on the loss of native forests. The key advantages of UH's technology are the ability to cheaply and quickly carbonize a wide variety of organic matter, including grass, wood and macadamia nut shells. In addition to cooking, the resulting charcoal could fuel a power plant more efficiently than coal, ethanol or biodiesel fuels, Antal said.

The UH method could also be cheaper, in part because the feedstock it can be made from should be less costly and because it can be produced more quickly.

More than $2 million was spent developing the patented technology, which also is licensed to Pacific Carbon and Graphite LLC and Waipahu-based Carbon Diversion Inc. Carbon Diversion, which has exclusive rights to manufacture charcoal using the UH process here in Hawai'i and other parts of the Pacific basin, said it recently landed its largest investment — $2 million — which will be used to build eight charcoal production units in Kapolei.

Licenses also are being discussed with other companies on the Mainland, in Canada and elsewhere in the world.

"I think the (Kingsford) license is a reflection of the value of flash carbonization and the investment that the state, the university and I have made," Antal said.

Kingsford, which is owned by Clorox Co., did not have a timeframe for producing charcoal using UH technology. Kingsford currently chars 1 million tons of wood scraps annually to make barbecue briquets.

"It's not something near-term," said Drew McGowan, a Clorox spokesman. "It's probably going to be a while before anything happens."

It could be two or three years before the company knows when or if it can commercialize the UH process, McGowan said.

Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com.