Biodiesel Plant Detailed Design

Project Description

Sacré-Davey performed a feasibility study to integrate General Biodiesel’s equipment and processes into their existing plant, producing up to 10 million gallons/year of biodiesel. The success of the integration work led to Sacré-Davey being retained to provide engineering services to bring the entire facility intooperation. Late in the design phase two pretreatment reaction vessels were unexpectedly classified as hazardous. Given the congested layout and restricted plot requirements only high-cost solutions were initially evident. Sacré-Davey developed a suite of potentially low-cost solutions and the client accepted a design with a dropped floor H-Class room that tightly fit inside the existing building. This solution satisfied regulators, met the owners cost expectations and required minimal schedule adjustment. In subsequent phases, Sacré-Davey developed a design that allowed for lower cost feed stocks (such as used cooking oil) and staged the plant rebuild for process conversion. The transition from batch to continuous processing combined with the ability to throttle between 5 and 10 MMGPY minimized downtime, matched cash flow to construction costs, and allowed the owner the flexibility to use lower cost feedstocks to adjust to market conditions and maximize margins.