The key new construction industry product resulted from a two-decade engineering push that culminated with a green manufacturing facility in Willows, Calif., a small town in the heart of the Sacramento Valley.

CalPlant now produces medium-density fiberboard (MDF) in a sustainable practice by turning post-harvest rice straw waste, with no added formaldehyde, into Eureka MDF, a board that matches the performance of traditional wood and can be used to make furniture, cabinetry, doors and moldings.

“We were never going to give up,” says Jerry Uhland, president and CalPlant founder. “I was a rice farmer; my partner—the Boyd family—was in the farming business. We saw there had to be something you could use this rice straw for.”

Getting the project to where it is now—producing 600 truckloads of MDF by September 2021—required decades of engineering work, financing guarantees for the $400-million project and a four-year construction project to build the manufacturing plant, which sits on 276 acres in an area that produces 20% of the country’s rice. CalPlant sources its rice straw from within an average 25-mile radius, providing a local benefit in both jobs and a sustainable way of replenishing local fields.

Uhland说：“这是一个农业社区，我们得到了当地机构和整个社区的令人难以置信的支持。”
第一步是工程和融资。将稻草转换为MDF的过程与创建基于木材的产品的过程并不完全不同。加州法律禁止收获后剩下的大米茎燃烧，因此淹没田野并让大米腐烂是准备未来种植的田野的唯一方法。取而代之的是，Calplant取垃圾稻草。

工程需要在中途进行更改，以减少由于FAA法规而导致的主塔的高度。该结构与传统的MDF工厂的结构并不不同，但是工厂内的工艺需要独特的工程。
Photo courtesy Industrial Projects Consulting

麦秆支架,平均重达1100磅, require the same machines as a wood plant, but with a different steam pressure in the refining process to fully saturate the 3-ft-tall hollow stalks and explode them into fiber bundles in about 15 seconds. From there, the cotton candy-like individual fibers act the same as typical wood-based MDF fibers, leading to the creation of MDF boards that Uhland says have performed in the marketplace on par or better than traditional MDF.

Calplant说，在显微镜水平上，卷曲的稻草纤维为Eureka MDF提供尺寸稳定性和强度，而纤维精炼过程将废料变成了具有环境意识的产品。另外，由于稻草的可再生和丰富性质，不仅产品可持续，还可以从冬季中需要淹没的稻田中清除垃圾吸管，从而保存水并减少甲烷排放腐烂的稻草产生。

To help with both the engineering and the financing, German engineering firm Siempelkamp guaranteed lenders the volume and quality of MDF boards while Columbia Forest Products, also an equity partner, guaranteed the sale of the boards at a minimum price for 20 years. And in such a competitive market, the boards have been performing well. “If we can make it faster, they would be buying it faster,” Uhland says.

The first two hurdles of engineering and financing took more than 20 years, but Uhland says “construction was even tougher.”

Early on, the original contractor’s role was greatly diminished, and Industrial Projects Consulting took over as the construction manager on the plant, hiring all contractors and material suppliers to complete the project, all while working hand-in-hand with the owners, Siempelkamp and Oregon-based Evergreen Engineering.

然后是下一个主要问题：关于工厂高度的FFA协议，迫使工厂主塔的高度减少100英尺。
“It required a pretty significant redesign effort midway to reduce the height,” says Larry Persinger, owner of Industrial Projects Consulting. “It was a dramatic redesign that required a pretty herculean effort by Siempelkamp, Evergreen and CalPlant to make that all work.”

戈登•Yutzy常绿工程总统说s learning about the height changes was quite the surprise. For the fix, they created two shorter structures instead of one taller tower.

Persinger称其为“有点小故障”，并且对施工时间表有影响。他说：“我们正在争先恐后地试图让承包商忙碌而富有成效。”“这对各方都是一个挑战。”

German engineering firm Siempelkamp devised the process for converting rice straw to MDF. A steam pressure refining process saturates the 3-ft-tall, hollow stalks and explodes them into fiber bundles in seconds.
Photo courtesy Industrial Projects Consulting

在建造MDF工厂的另一个主要区别是，要全年储存近30万吨稻草，到处理六周的卡车带来高度易燃产品，需要完全重新思考原材料。该地点的绝大部分都用存储空间占用，实际制造厂仅留下25英亩的土地。

The MDF plant features steel, some sourced locally and some in Europe. This necessitated intense coordination between Evergreen and Siempelkamp. Early on, Evergreen helped the owners understand the raw material needs and then provided structural steel, electrical and mechanical system engineering outside of the main process equipment after Siempelkamp joined the equation.

Yutzy说：“我们已经多次完成了炼油厂系统，并且几乎是相同的设备，但内部设备有所不同。”“通过新的过程，有很多测试。”

Persinger says that Evergreen also was responsible for ensuring that all the Siempelkamp drawings met U.S. codes and matched up with onsite systems. “The whole design coordination was ongoing and sometimes a difficult part of the project,” he says. “We led the parade on the coordination, but getting the coordination done was a big deal.”

The $20-million hot press built by Siempelkamp is 10 ft wide, 117 ft long and uses more than 1,000 individual parts while operating at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. It produces MDF at a rate of 300 ft per minute. At full capacity, the plant will produce more than 150 million sq ft of MDF annually and use 280,000 tons of rice straw.

Uhland says that with his two-decade-plus perseverance getting CalPlant up and running, he now knows what he needs for a second plant. Persinger was impressed with Uhland every step of the way.

他说：“我已经这样做了将近50年，而且从未见过这个人的坚韧。”“而且他是一个稻农，为此筹集了4亿美元。他真正地帮助了他来自的农业社区，然后创造了一种非常绿色的产品。在我们完成的所有项目中18luck官网，我们看着这件事，然后“这是我们参与过的最好的总体，最好的全能好项目。”