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 Steve
Gill with some of the onions that he grows. Waste
from his family's processing plant in Oxnard is
used to run two fuel cells that produce
600-kilowatts of electricity, enough to operate
the plant’s refrigeration units and lighting. .
Onions produce tears and energy
at an Oxnard plant
Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles
Times
Steve Gill with some of the
onions that he grows. Waste from his family's
processing plant in Oxnard is used to run two fuel
cells that produce 600-kilowatts of electricity,
enough to operate the plant’s refrigeration units
and lighting.
A farming company uses juice from the
vegetable to run a fuel cell. It's one of a growing number
of businesses that use their waste to produce electricity.
By Tiffany Hsu >>>
July 17, 2009
After more
than 20 years farming onions, Steve Gill still breaks
out in tears at his processing facility.
Only now he's crying all the
way to the bank.
He recently
began using juice from his pungent crop to create
energy to run his refrigerators and lighting. That's
slicing $700,000 annually off the electric bill at his
14-acre plant in Oxnard. He's also saving $400,000 a
year on disposal costs. And he has secured more than
$3 million in government and power company incentives
to do it.
Gill figures the $9.5-million
system will pay for itself in less than six years
while eliminating up to 30,000 tons of carbon
dioxide-equivalent emissions a year.
"It's a great sustainability story,
but it was first a business decision to solve a waste
problem," said Gill, 59, who co-owns the company with
his brother David. "But in doing so, we solved a lot
of environmental problems too."
Gills Onions
is one of a small but growing cadre of U.S. companies
generating their own electricity on site with waste
from their production processes. In addition to plant
material, firms are using a variety of feedstocks,
including animal manure, vegetable oil, whey -- even
beer.
The massive upfront costs limit
the appeal of these so-called closed-loop systems. But
volatile energy prices and the rising cost of waste
disposal are compelling more firms to take a look.
Farmers and
processors in California's $37-billion agricultural
industry in particular are looking for ways to save money
and reduce their environmental footprint, said Sonia
Salas, science and technology manager for the Western
Growers Assn.
"Many growers
want technology that helps them handle waste," she said.
"This is a concept that other operations can definitely
use."
The system at Gills Onions, which
will be unveiled to the public today, converts methane
from fermented onion juice into energy burned in two
on-site fuel cells.
The company has
farms throughout California that send onions year-round to
the Oxnard plant, where they are skinned, diced, sliced or
packaged whole in a numbingly frigid facility by 400
employees. The vegetables are then shipped all over the
country to wholesalers and retailers such as Ralphs.
Machines slice
off about 40% of each onion. That leaves 150 tons of waste
a day. For years, the Gills spread these leavings as
fertilizer over their fields or sold them as cattle feed.
But the refuse was expensive to handle, and it posed a
hazard to the atmosphere and groundwater.
So the brothers
decided to turn it into energy instead.
Machines extract
about 30,000 gallons of onion juice that is then sent to a
145,000-gallon holding tank kept at a toasty 95 degrees.
Inside, bacteria purchased from an Anheuser-Busch beer
brewery produce methane gas by feasting on the
carbohydrates in the fermenting juice.
"It's like a big
stomach," said project manager Bill Deaton.
The gas is
purified, dehumidified and compressed, then burned in the
fuel cells at temperatures that exceed 1,000 degrees. The
600-kilowatt system produces enough power to operate the
plant's refrigeration units and lighting.
The Gills are
also looking into installing a battery at the plant that
can store excess electricity from the fuel cells. Reserve
energy could be used during peak hours in the summer, when
electricity is more expensive.
"I didn't want
to depend on anyone taking my waste for me," Gill said.
"It was my problem, and I had to solve it. It's a relief
to find a solution."
Producing
biofuel for a single company's closed-loop system is one
thing, but integrating the energy into the public grid is
still a prohibitively expensive and difficult endeavor.
Fuel from
organic matter, such as crushed palm nuts or fermented
wheat, is rarely pure enough to blend with commercial
energy sources, said Ross McCracken, editor of Platts
Energy Economist.
As a result,
companies would have to sink funds into cleaning the
biogas and then invest in a pipeline or other delivery
system to hook the fuel into the national pool.
And even large
companies would struggle to produce enough fuel to make a
significant contribution.
The drawbacks
make many experts skeptical of the large-scale potential
of any biogas.
"There's no
silver bullet," McCracken said. "The technology isn't
quite there.
Meanwhile, Gills
Onions is keeping its eco-friendly aspirations close to
home. Gill hopes to turn the plant into a zero-waste
facility by revamping packaging and by recycling
employees' lunch leftovers.
The company even
cleans its own wastewater and funnels it into a cooling
tower.
"We consider this a long-term
investment for the company," Gill said.
tiffany.hsu@latimes.com
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