Saybr Contractors
Seattle Biodiesel Refinery
Owner: Seattle Biodiesel
ABC members: Evergreen Concrete Cutting, Safety & Supply Co.
Seattle Biodiesel is the first commercial-scale biodiesel refinery in the Pacific Northwest, producing fuel by refining the oil from soybeans and canola with a production capacity of more than 5 million gallons a year.
Although the initial plan was to build a small plant and expand as the market grew, Seattle Biodiesel accepted Sabyr’s recommendation to build a larger facility that could accommodate future demand.
Saybr oversaw assembly of the 12-tank refinery, including all piping and welding, mechanical and electrical mechanisms, and commissioning of the system.
The refinery’s exclusive methods and processes meant there were no formalized plans or specifications. In addition, limited budgets mandated that building materials would need to be found and retrofitted. Getting permits proved to be particularly complicated due to the prototype nature of the plant, as well as the numerous agencies that were involved.
Throughout the process, Saybr needed to prove the safety and viability of the planned refinery, as well as educate the permitting agencies about the fuel itself and its inherent non-hazardous properties.
Saybr helped relocate 12 used but serviceable holding tanks from the Rainier brewery to the biodiesel plant, a 7,000-square-foot warehouse a few blocks away. An excavator was used to build a ramp up to the second story where the tanks were built into the brewery building: a crane could not be used due to the instability of the site’s soil. Part of the building had to be demolished to remove the tanks.
A stable foundation for the tanks at the new location was built using poured stem walls and welding the tanks to steel base plates.
In addition to the 12 holding tanks, Saybr located and reused several other tanks for mixing, polishing and filtering purposes. Some of the piping and valve work was reclaimed from Saybr’s own inventory.
Six months after opening, the facility had sold more than 360,000 gallons and become the largest producer of biodiesel on the West Coast.
The project had zero recordable incidents.