The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is an exciting place to work and we are grateful to be a small part of their ongoing research. The NREL facility that is supported by our featured project is the Integrated Biorefinery Research Facility. The goal of this facility is to develop, test, evaluate, and demonstrate processes and technologies for the production of bio-based products and fuels. Basically, they test many forms of organic material to see how they can be used as fuel.

The area where the organic material is input into the facility has a system of ducts that requires specific structural support due to the weight of the material in the ducts and specific path of the ducts. At the time we began design, the ducts were being supported by a patchwork system of Unistrut that was insufficient. We designed a braced steel structure to fit in and around the system and provide support at the required locations.