The California Energy Commission (CEC) was awarded a “green leadership” award at a state environmental summit and exposition in Sacramento Tuesday, calling out both private- and public-sector research and development grants under the CEC’s $83.5 million annual Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program.

An advanced waste management and combined heat-power (CHP) installation at an agricultural processing center in Oxnard, CA, 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles, was one of the CEC-backed projects lauded at the Green California Summit and Expo. The state grant of nearly a half-million dollars to Gills Onions’ facility supported an advanced energy recovery system (AERS).

Using the onion processing facility as an example of where the CEC research and demonstration monies accelerate development of energy-saving processes and equipment, Commissioner James Boyd said in just two years the $499,000 grant to Gills “has solved a host of problems.” Boyd cited the elimination of up to 14,5000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions annually; saving 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually; and saving 112,000 Mcf of natural gas per year.

Before the AERS system was added at the Gills facility, thousands of pounds of onion waste were trucked to areas where they were left to decompose, releasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a result, not to mention leaving bad odors and potential groundwater contamination. After looking at several options, Gills decided to extract the juice from the onion peels and use it as biofuel.

The juice is fed into an anaerobic digester, which processes 200,000-300,000 pounds of onion waste daily to produce the green gas. The biogas is cleaned and conditioned for use in two 300 kW fuel cells producing CHP for the facility use. After solving some variable gas flow challenges, 112,000 Mcf of natural gas has now been displaced by a like amount of the biogas to run the fuel cells.

Much of the biogas cleanup and conditioning research, which the CEC grant helped underwrite, was performed by the Gas Technology Institute, and researchers will continue to monitor the biogas quality for the rest of this year.

“This project will build upon California’s leadership role in waste-to-energy conversion by helping demonstrate a new value-added use for agricultural digester biogas and demonstrating CHP generation,” Boyd said.

Separately, the CEC also picked up accolades for its PIER support of an innovative energy-saving measure at the California Franchise Tax Board, the equivalent to a state tax-collecting body, such as the Internal Revenue Service. The tax collecting department implemented an innovative dynamic cooling program in its data centers.

Research leading to the implementation was completed under the CEC PIER programs.

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