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Aventine Renewable Energy

Challenge:
Aventine Renewable Energy desired an expansion of their Ethanol production facilities in Pekin, Illinois. However land was limited. The only available site was once an oxbow lake of the Illinois River that had later been used as an ash pond. Utilizing this site would require excavating up to 20' of ash, or development and construction of a deep foundation design. Regardless, either method appeared excessively expensive and time consuming.

Solution:
Weaver Boos Consultants engineers have significant experience with ground improvement techniques. They theorized that dynamic compaction could be a cost and time-saving alternative. An additional geotechnical investigation proved them correct. They determined that dynamic compaction utilizing an 11 ton weight dropped from 50' in the air on 8' centers would provide sufficient densification of the ash and other fill material; in other words, they could build without removing of all the ash. Cost estimates indicated this effort could save millions of dollars in construction costs.

Dynamic compaction and creative use of on-site materials provided the following advantages to Aventine:

  • Eliminated the need to remove most of the ash from the construction area
  • Made use of bottom ash available on-site as structural fill
  • Eliminated the expense of importing backfill since ash was not removed
  • Ground improvement was sufficient to require only shallow foundations

Results:
This open-minded, outside-the-box, thinking by Weaver Boos geotechnical engineers resulted in significant cost savings. Dynamic compaction of the 5-acre site cost less than $500,000, shaved months off of the construction schedule and saved:

  • 5 million dollars (compared to ash removal and backfill)
  • 3 million dollars (compared to using vibrocompacted stone columns to support the structures)