Capital expenses

The layers of protection are expensive to build and maintain throughout the life of the process. Factors include initial capital expense, operating costs, safety training cost, maintenance cost, and diversion of scarce and valuable technical resources into maintenance and operation of the layers of protection. 

This is not unusual to select an operating reflux ratio ten, or even fifty times such a low minimum. Selecting a higher reflux can reduce the number of trays required, and this becomes a balance of the reduction in trays versus operating and capital expense in handling the increased liquid both external to the column and internally. 

For the most part, these various forms of external treatment involve the use of capital expense equipment, whereas the term BW treatment is ordinarily employed to indicate the addition of various types of maintenance expense internal treatment specialty chemicals. 

The traditional catalyst used for esterification of acids to methyl esters is sulfuric acid. Homogeneous sulfuric acid catalysis has many downsides. When using sulfuric acid, much capital expense is required for Hastalloy and/or other specialty metals of construction. Homogeneous catalysis results in the contamination of the product by sulfur containing species. Therefore, neutralization and removal of acid is required to meet biodiesel specifications and to protect the downstream transesterification reactor. Inevitably, when using sulfuric acid, organic sulfur compounds will be produced. These products will cause the resultant biodiesel to fail specification tests. 

Generally, distance and volume are decisive factors. For a short distance, a pipeline can be very economic because the capital expense of a short pipeline may be close to the capital cost of trailers, and there are no transportation or liquefaction costs. As the distance increases, the capital cost of a pipeline increases rapidly, and the economics will depend on the quantity of hydrogen pipelines will be favoured for larger quantities of hydrogen. For small... 

The best-established wood modification process is the Finnish ThermoWood process. One of the major factors in the snccess of this technology in the commercial arena is the relatively low capital expense of the eqnipment reqnired for processing. The capital cost of plant for fnrfnrylation is also relatively low compared to fuU chemical modification, and commercialization of this process is well developed. Other processes involving higher capital expenditure (such as acetylation and the Plato process) have seen rather more hesitant development. However, once these processes have been established for a few years and the capital costs are paid off, there wiU be a reduction in the price of the prodncts, leading to an increase in demand. 

The energy optimization VIP is most beneficial for processes where energy and related capital expense are a relatively large fraction of the total operating cost. The benefits result in reduced energy requirements and environmental emissions in balance with project economics. This VIP should be implemented in the feasibihty phase (FEL-2) when preliminary PFDs and heat and material balances are available. 

The vendor claims that the capital costs for Ultraviolet (UV)/oxidation are typically 2 to 3 times higher than for activated carbon. In this context, longer term projects favor UV/oxidation because the cumulative savings in operating costs offset the higher capital expenses. For contaminant concentrations below 10 parts per million (ppm), activated carbon may provide a more cost-effective treatment option (D17097S, pp. 3-7). 

In 1998 and 1999, the Geo-Cleanse process was used to treat 16,500 gal of groundwater contaminated with trichloroethene (TCE) at the DOD s Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. According to the vendor, the total cost for the demonstration was 178,338. Approximately 97,018 of the total were capital expenses and the remaining 81,320 covered operation and maintenance costs. The costs associated with electrical power and water supply were not included in the final cost figure (D21045X, p. 127). 

Removing radionuclide contamination from water using sunflowers was estimated to cost between 2 to 6 per 1000 gal of water treated. These costs include waste disposal and capital expenses (D131431). 

Additionally, the firms within the industry report R D expenditures as a current expense not a capital expense. Not amortizing the cost streams associated with R D means that profits are somewhat overstated by not having an ongoing cost stream to charge against the revenue stream that result from launching new products. 

The present method can be extended easily to other applications. For instance, a cost function involving operating and capital expenses, and product distribution may be minimized with respect to operating and design variables. 

The key words to the future of methanol/gasoline blends for automotive use are need and availability. Technically, the operation of methanol/gasoline blends in automotive engines is feasible with some associated problems. Economically, methanol is not yet competitive with gasoline produced from petroleum, hence the need has not been strongly established. Since the need or market is not established, the capital expenses involved in producing methanol from coal or garbage are not presently justified. However, if 40-60% of the crude oil used in the U.S. to produce petroleum products should suddenly become unavailable, the need would be very real. The necessity of compete evaluation of methanol and other alternate fuels is evident. 

There are at least 25 USP or BP formulation monographs that use flame photometry to assay ions of interest (Table This technique is applicable to a variety of situations because of the relatively low cost per sample (in analyst time, instrument capital expense, and testing supplies) reasonable precision (typical relative standard deviation values are 0.6% for sodium, 1% for potassium, and 2% for lithium) low sample volume requirements (as low as 10 pi in some cases) and ease of operation. 

If the optimal value of the objective is not at a constraint limit, then it will usually be determined by a trade-off between two or more effects. Trade-offs are very common in design, because better performance in terms of increased purity, increased recovery, or reduced energy or raw materials use usually comes at the expense of higher capital expense, operating expense, or both. The optimization problem must capture the trade-off between cost and benefit. 

If the cost of capital is used as the interest rate (see Section 6.6.4), then the annual capital charge ratio can be used to convert the initial capital expense into an annual capital charge, or annualized capital cost, as described in Section 6.2.5. 

---