Capital Cost Guidelines

Costs should be included with any rules of thumb because costs are such vital information to engineering practice. Therefore, in this book, cost correlations for the FOB cost and factors for estimation of the complete installation of that equipment into a working process are given for each type of equipment. The cost estimates are ball park ideas + 30 %. Here we discuss the correlations, the L+M factors to convert FOB costs into bare module costs, factors to obtain the fixed capital investment costs and finally the capital cost guidelines for the equipment described in the main text, with title captions that are the same as in the main text. 

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The guidelines are quite general, but will at least act as introduction to the types of turbines available to the process designer. Sometimes the decision on which type turbine to select is not obvious. The back pressure turbine is most frequently selected. It has lower capital cost, simple construction, is the most suitable turbine for high speeds, and is generally more reliable. 

Brown developed guidelines for the preparation of order-of-magni-tude and study capital cost estimates based upon the Lang and Hand methods. Brown modified Lang and Hand methods for materials of construction, instrumentation, and location factors. He found that the modified Hand and Garrett module factor methods gave results within 3.5 percent. 

I think most of us try to look at our economics with the Braun guidelines. I think the bigger problem probably exists in the estimate of the capital costs and the capital-related costs are a large portion of the economics that go into the price of the product. I don t know the answers to that, except perhaps to have one completely unbiased, well-experienced organization do a capital cost analysis for all the processes. Even that is a problem in that process designs are in different degrees of development. 

There is no doubt that companies can save fixed and capital costs and deliver projects faster by the intelligent use of outside agencies. However, there are some guidelines to successful outsourcing. 

Basic investment and operating cost information was obtained from information in our files plus some input from Reference (1) adjusted to mid-1979 dollars. Natural gas is the assumed feedstock at a base cost of 2.00/106 Btu. Based on the guidelines, the capital cost of a 100 million SCF/day plant is 66.3 million, and the hydrogen price is 1.61/103 CF or 4.76/106 Btu. 

Basic investment and operating cost information were scaled down to 100 million SCF/day from a larger IGT design (2). The total capital cost, according to the guidelines set in Table 1, is 237 million. At the base coal cost of 17.7/ton ( 1.00/106 Btu), hydrogen price is 2.56/103 CF, or 7.84/106 Btu. 

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