Gills Onions Operations Set to be Showcased on Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs

(February 13, 2012) - Gills Onions of Oxnard, Calif., a company for which HDR successfully completed a national award-winning project, will be featured on Tuesday night's episode of the Discovery Channel program "Dirty Jobs."

According to the Discovery Channel's website, Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe "…slices, dices and tastes onions before cleaning out the juicing machine and parts of the reactor" in the first segment of the one-hour show that debuts Feb. 14 at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST.

In 2010 the Gills Onions Advanced Energy Recovery System (AERS) project won the prestigious Grand Conceptor Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies, the first HDR project to win the national award for best overall engineering achievement.

The Gills Onions AERS project was led by a team in the HDR Water Business Group's Irvine, Calif., office. HDR worked with Gills Onions to take a waste-reduction concept to a breakthrough $9.5 million energy-saving system. It's now the only facility in the world that converts onion waste into power.

The reactor referred to in the episode description refers to the high-rate anaerobic digestion reactor that treats juice extracted from onion peels to produce methane-rich biogas.

For more information about the 'Dirty Jobs' broadcast, please visit the show's page on the Discovery Channel website.

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