Onions generate electricity

Gills Onions produces up to 300,000 pounds of peels a day. Rather than waste them, the California company is now using the refuse to run its processing facility. Engineers installed machinery at the plant to grind and press the peels into 30,000 gallons of onion juice, which is fed into an anaerobic digester to produce methane that powers two 300-kw fuel cells. The system also presses the solid remains into 20 tons of onion cake that the company sells as cattle feed. Gills Onions expects the $9.5 million project, which earned this year’s top award from the American Council of Engineering Companies, to pay for itself within six years.