SEMECS, a public consortium charged with building and operating a new Biomass plant in Varennes Canada as part of climate change commitments was struggling with optimum building design.

This plant uses state of the art technology to process organic waste into Biogases.  The resulting benefits are astounding; 51,000 tons a year of organic waste (household, grass clippings and agricultural organic waste etc) is diverted from landfill and is transformed into fuel used for a nearby ethanol facility.  This reduces greenhouse gas generation by 110,000 tons annually and the remaining solid matter is reused as fertilizer and soil replenishment for farmland.

With a $58M budget constraint, the building was planned to have a painted structure.  However, the fabricator with experience in both painted and Hot-Dip building structures argued that galvanizing would be a better option for many different reasons.

First was the evident life cycle cost benefits from galvanizing especially in the highly humid conditions generated by the biogas process.  Secondly, the fabricator argued that substantial savings would be realized in building erection with extremely rugged galvanizing.  Painted components are often scratched, and countless man-hours and project delays are required to constantly repair almost every component as it is manipulated.  This was especially important given that the timing of the project would result in winter steel erection, putting the already questionable quality of on-site touch-ups in even greater doubt when the freezing temperatures and precipitation of Canadian winters are considered.

The decision was made to galvanize the entire building structure and they never looked back; erection cost and time were greatly reduced and of course, the facility is now far better protected for the long run with Hot-Dip Galvanizing.