Portfolio | Oilseed

Canola Process Facility Rail

  • Designed processing facility capable of producing 850,000 metric tons per year
  • Strategically designed site to include 12 miles of track, store 3 unit trains of 117 cars at a time, and 25 manifest cars
  • Integrated innovative features into the rail infrastructure such as automated railcar indexers, spiral curve tracks, and super-elevated rail curve
VAA designed a facility capable of producing 850,000 metric tons of canola per year, including a challenging rail design that enabled high-volume trains to enter the facility at high speeds while minimizing residential highway blockage.

Successful rail design and layout are key legacies of this project. VAA’s multidisciplinary team collaborated with Canada’s two Class I railroads (Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City) to connect their mainlines to the facility, giving the site owner, and VAA client, greater flexibility in logistics and shipping costs. Compliant to provincial and Canadian regulations, VAA’s final design of spiral curve tracks were a solution to allowing inbound trains moving at high speeds to enter the facility and minimize time the highway is blocked.

Disciplines
Partners
  • Canadian Pacific (CP) Railway
  • Canadian National (CN) Railway
  • Client’s Executive  Design Team

Soybean Crush Facility

  • 60,000 engineering staff hours
  • 1,000 generated drawings/specs
  • Collaborated with six project partners
  • Hosted bim 360 model with eight-plus models combined into one
VAA designed a 38.5 million bushel per year soybean crush facility capable of producing 847,000 tons of soybean meal, 450 million pounds of crude soybean oil, and 77,000 tons pelleted soybean hulls per year.

The multidisciplinary engineering and design feat required intimate collaboration between VAA and six partner engineering firms and construction contractors to advance the large-scale project efficiently while avoiding project overlaps and gaps.

VAA was the lead designer and provided design for multiple buildings including the prep, extraction, boiler, truck oil loadout, administration, and meal storage buildings.

Disciplines
Partners
  • Fagen Inc.
  • Mid-States Construction Inc.
  • Larson Engineering
  • Pinnacle Engineering
  • Summit Fire Protection
  • Crown Iron Works

Soybean Processing Plant

  • Designed a 3,800 tons-per-day soybean processing facility on a 435-acre site
  • Produced 2,294 construction and fabrication drawings
  • Expanded annual processing capacity to over 40 million bushels
  • Collaborated with project partners on equipment layout and utilities design
VAA designed a 3,800 tons per day soybean processing facility on a 435-acre site, expanding the client’s capacity to serve the region’s agriculture sector.

VAA’s multidisciplinary team, in collaboration with our partners, delivered a state-of-the-art facility including full design of soybean preparation and processing facilities; an oil extraction plant; oil and meal multimodal layout; feed ingredient receiving and storage; two 86,000 lb-per-hour steam boiler plants; cooling towers; a maintenance building; and fire protection systems.

With consideration to the size and scope of the project, VAA assembled its Balance of Plant (BOP) service, a holistic solution supported by all disciplines.  In addition to technical expertise, VAA demonstrated meticulous attention to document control and project management, proving vital to the successful, timely completion of the project.

Disciplines
Partners
  • Fagen Engineering, Inc.
  • Crown Iron Works, Inc.
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