NEI Nuclear Notes

Gills Onions is using onion juice from its processing plant to power a 600 kilowatt fuel cell electricity generation unit that will slice $700,000 in energy costs from the bottom line. Why not? After all, they have the onions. The story even answers the question that first popped into our head: if you use onions to run your onion factory, mightn’t you run out of onions to send around to customers? One of Gill’s best-selling products is a line of sliced and diced fresh-cut onions. Because about 40 percent of each onion is unused in the process, the company generates some 150 tons of waste a day. Okay, so they have the onions (though that seems like a lot of unused onion). Then what? The system takes methane from fermented onion juice and converts it to energy that is burned in two fuel cells on-site. Read the rest . It’s pretty neat, although a bit queasy making. Also only really works when you have a lot of onion waste hanging around the plant. Producing bi...