The new renewable energy facility will be located immediately north of the SWA’s existing Palm Beach County Renewable Energy Facility No. 1 on Jog Road in West Palm Beach. It will reduce the amount of waste currently being landfilled by up to 85 percent, delaying for many years the need to develop a new landfill in Palm Beach County.

The plant will process 1 million tons of municipal solid waste per year and generate enough electricity to power 56,000 homes. The plant will be equipped with advanced control technology to reduce emissions. In addition, the emissions permit limits will be the lowest of any renewable energy facility combusting municipal solid waste in the United States.

Vibratory equipment presents unique challenges related to human perception and structure resonance. CSD’s design goal was to ensure the multi-leveled support structures did not negatively react to the operating frequencies of the supported process equipment. CSD conducted frequency analysis of the support towers to ensure the structure frequencies were isolated from the forcing frequencies of the supported equipment. CSD was able to provide an engineered solution by adjusting the stiffness of the supporting structure and accurately modeling the supported masses.

CSD worked closely with the primary contractors engineering group as they designed the concrete bunker walls which supported the multi-level process equipment support structure designed by CSD. CSD had to understand the stiffness of the supporting concrete walls to accurately model the steel structures natural frequency.

CSD designed three multi-level platform and truss structures which support a series of vibratory and non-vibratory process equipment associated with the post incineration ash handling process. CSD provided EOR type services for the three platforms including design drawings, shop drawing review, site visits and observation reports, and field modification requests.