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FEBRUA RY 2017 | 77 Surrey Organic Biofuel Facility RENDERINGS COURTESY STANTEC Surrey Organic Biofuel Facility T he City of Surrey's brand new biofuel facility is quite the achievement. Not only is it the first fully integrated, closed-loop waste management system to be built in North America, but it is a sustainable milestone for the City of Surrey and B.C. The project was initiated by the City of Surrey following its desire to achieve a number of key goals contained within its own Sustainability Charter, including the reduction of waste to landfill through organic waste diversion, a switch to alternative (clean) fuels for its fleet and an overall reduction in its annual corporate carbon emissions. The facility broke ground in April 2015 and is expected to be completed in June of this year. Once complete it will process 115,000 metric tons of organic waste annually into a 100 percent renewable natural gas (RNG) that will be used to power the City's waste collection vehicles and utility maintenance fleet. The facility will also process a high-end compost product suitable for agricultural and landscaping use, and will further help Metro Vancouver to achieve its regional 70 percent waste diversion target. It really is quite something to behold. The environmental benefits associated with the facility include a reduction in carbon emissions by approximately 40,000 tons per year, which is the equivalent of taking 10,400 vehicles off the road annually. To be able to arrive at a successful outcome required funding and specialist expertise, and so the City of Surrey decided that the biofuel facility would be developed as a design, build, finance, operate and maintain (DBFOM) model via a public-private partnership (P3). To this end, the City successfully leveraged federal funding where 25 percent of the capital cost for the project will be paid for by the Canadian Government via its P3 Canada Fund. Orgaworld Canada Ltd., an organic waste processing business, was selected by the City to develop the project following a competitive procurement process, while its subsidiary, Orgaworld Surrey Ltd., is heading up the project, undertaking the DBFOM of the facility. "This is the fourth facility of this type that we have built, but what stands out about this project is that it is providing a total solution for organics from biogas upgrading to compost management, and doing it all at one facility," explains Ryan Lauzon, project manager at Orgaworld Canada. The facility is being constructed on city-owned property located in Port Kells, adjacent to the Surrey transfer station, and is as Rick Murray from Smith Bros. & Wilson (BC) Ltd. describes it, "one of the nicest sites I've ever had to work on. The City of Surrey had it prepared and cleaned up." When it came to the architectural design, Stantec realized that due to the forward-thinking, educational nature of the building, it made sense to really bring the building alive through the use of colour and angles. "We realized this building should be the basis of civic pride and something visible to the community. We wanted it to be at the forefront of the public realm so people would interact with it and want to come in and find out more," explains Darren Bryson from Stantec. "We used a bright and playful colour scheme on the exterior to give some illustration of what's happening inside. Around the one-storey biofuel processing area we used green to denote the parts of the building dedicated to the composting process, and on the three-storey administrative level on the west end that houses the offices, an education facility and roof garden, we used orange to indicate the vibrancy going on within," adds Bryson. The building itself is a tilt-up, cast- in-place concrete structure with galvanized structural steel roof deck, truss and joists; chosen because of its durable nature and ability to withstand extreme humidity levels. "We were able to utilize rapid impact compaction which saved a lot of time and effort upfront," says Murray. And while he adds that the building itself was fairly straightforward, logistically, it was challenging, as the building footprint is the size of the site. Out the back of the building on the east end proudly stands the facility's 230-foot-high aviation painted dispersion stack, which is comprised of four pieces each weighing approximately 194,000 lbs. It is here that 100 percent of the treated waste air from the facility will be sent. by NATALIE BRUCKNER-MENCHELLI

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