Chemicals production costs

While the principal value of the book is for the professional chemist or student of chemistry, it should also be of value to many people not especially educated as chemists. Workers in the natural sciences—physicists, mineralogists, biologists, pharmacists, engineers, patent attorneys, and librarians—are often called upon to solve problems dealing with the properties of chemical products or materials of construction. Eor such needs this compilation supplies helpful information and will serve not only as an economical substitute for the costly accumulation of a large library of monographs on specialized subjects, but also as a means of conserving the time required to search for... 

Secunda discharges no process water effluents. AU. water streams produced are cleaned and reused in the plant. The methane and light hydrocarbons in the product are reformed with steam to generate synthesis gas for recycle (14). Even at this large scale, the cost of producing fuels and chemicals by the Fischer-Tropsch process is dominated by the cost of synthesis gas production. Sasol has estimated that gas production accounts for 58% of total production costs (39). 

Cost Calculation. The main elements determining production cost are identical for fine chemicals and commodities (see Economic evaluation), a breakdown of production cost is given in Table 2. In multipurpose plants, where different fine chemicals occupying the equipment to different extents are produced during the year, a fair allocation of costs is a more difficult task. The allocation of the product-related costs, such as raw material and utiHties, is relatively easy. It is much more difficult to allocate for capital cost, labor, and maintenance. A simplistic approach is to define a daily rent by dividing the total yearly fixed cost of the plant by the number of production days. But that approach penalizes the simple products using only part of the equipment. 

Research nd Development. Eor commodity chemicals, emphasis is on the improvement of plant operation and reduction of production costs. Eor specialty chemicals, emphasis is on assembling a staff capable of quickly identifying and solving a customer problem under the existing plant conditions and operating procedures of the customer. 

Pricing of specialty chemicals and specialty chemical systems is, as noted, based on value to the customer. The elements of taw matetial and production cost enter into the producer s calculations, but extra emphasis must be given to appHcations research and service costs with minimal attention in most cases to capital costs. 

Enzymatic hydrolysis is also used for the preparation of L-amino acids. Racemic D- and L-amino acids and their acyl-derivatives obtained chemically can be resolved enzymatically to yield their natural L-forms. Aminoacylases such as that from Pispergillus OTj e specifically hydrolyze L-enantiomers of acyl-DL-amino acids. The resulting L-amino acid can be separated readily from the unchanged acyl-D form which is racemized and subjected to further hydrolysis. Several L-amino acids, eg, methionine [63-68-3], phenylalanine [63-91-2], tryptophan [73-22-3], and valine [72-18-4] have been manufactured by this process in Japan and production costs have been reduced by 40% through the appHcation of immobilized cell technology (75). Cyclohexane chloride, which is a by-product in nylon manufacture, is chemically converted to DL-amino-S-caprolactam [105-60-2] (23) which is resolved and/or racemized to (24)... 

The process involving aHyl alcohol has not been iadustriaHy adopted because of the high production cost of this alcohol However, if the aHyl alcohol production cost can be markedly reduced, and also if the evaluated cost of hydrogen chloride, which is obtained as a by-product from the substitutive chlorination reaction, is cheap, then this process would have commercial potential. The high temperature propylene—chlorination process was started by SheH Chemical Corporation ia 1945 as an iadustrial process (1). The reaction conditions are a temperature of 500°C, residence time 2—3 s, pressure 1.5 MPa (218 psi), and an excess of propylene to chlorine. The yield of aHyl chloride is 75—80% and the main by-product is dichloropropane, which is obtained as a result of addition of chlorine. Other by-products iaclude monochioropropenes, dichloropropenes, 1,5-hexadiene. At low temperatures, the amount of... 

The principal objective of technical service in the chemical industry is to provide timely and professional information and support to downstream customers regarding chemical products and thek uses. It is neither cost-effective nor necessary for a consumer of chemical products to develop a staff of speciahsts having detailed expertise in all aspects of chemical raw materials and thek uses, particularly in a time of increa singly complex and rapidly technologically driven economies. Rather, this variety of expertise is provided in the chemical marketplace by technical service professionals whose knowledge and skills are made available by chemical products suppHers. As such, successful chemical companies provide technical service as a critical element of thek offerings to the marketplace making use of this aspect of the value chain to enhance thek competitiveness. 

The cost of transportation has an important effect on the marketabiUty of chemicals. For that reason, transportation, along with numerous other factors, is often a significant consideration in determining the location of chemical production faciUties. In addition, convenient and economical access to water and rail transportation and the interstate highway system, as well as proximity to raw materials and markets, may influence the choice of warehouse and terminal sites for storage and redistribution of chemical products (see Plant location). 

The modern trend is for overhead costs to become an increasing proportion of total product costs. This results from the ever-greater sophistication of process plants. Therefore, it is highly desirable that chemical engineers should have some say in the location of overheads and that this should not be left entirely to accountants. 

TABLE 21-16 Typical 1996 Cost of Containers for Chemical Products... 

In spite of their rather complicated chemical structure, which consequently involves rather expensive production costs, the bis-phenol A polycarbonates have achieved an important place amongst the speeiality plastics materials. 

The design of production plants for the manufacture of the three categories of product varies considerably. Fine chemicals are usually produced in batch reactors, which may also be used for the production of a variety of similar products. Fine chemicals usually have demanding product quality specifications and, consequently, a significant fraction of the production costs are involved in product purification and testing. Intermediate volume chemicals have less rigorous quality specifications than fine chemicals and are usually manufactured in product-specific-plants, either as batch or continuous flow processes. Bulk chemical production plants usually operate continuous flow processes... 

An example of the way in which process competition works in the manufacture of plastics is the story of acrylonitrile. The first process for the production of this plastic was based upon the reaction between hydrogen cyanide and acetylene, both hard to handle, poisonous, and explosive chemicals. The raw material costs were relatively low as compared to materials for other monomers, but the plant investment and manufacturing costs were too high. As a result, originally acrylonitrile monomer (1950s) sold for about 30 cents per pound and the future of the material looked dim as other plastics such as polyethylene became available at much lower prices due to their lower production costs. 

A failure to install a necessary softener is ultimately reflected in higher bills for maintenance, repairs, and water treatment chemical products and services. Scaling can still occur with soft, lean waters, and the cost of additional fuel over a year probably would pay for several water softeners. In addition, the control of internal water chemistry becomes more difficult than it might otherwise be, which places an additional operational burden upon the facility. 

With the smallest heating boilers or low volume/low pressure steam producers, water treatment service companies tend to promote easy-to-understand programs, typically based on only one or two multiple-component, blended chemical products (multiblends or one-drum treatments), or increasingly, the novel crystalline solid concentrates (solid water treatment). These customers often have only very limited, water-related, in-house technical skills, and multiblend product programs will seem attractive because they are relatively easy to apply. However, the blending process makes it notoriously difficult to control individual component reserves in the boiler and generally adds considerably to the overall program costs. 

The equipment and chemicals used in MOCVD are all available commercially but are expensive and production cost is high. For these reasons, MOCVD is considered in applications where high quality is essential. 

The process (chemical reaction) by which a chemical product is made, as depicted by an equation, is called synthesis. Working in laboratories, chemists devise new ways to synthesize known chemicals or new chemicals never made before and not found in nature. Synthesis chemists working in industrial laboratories also must find or develop uses for the new chemicals that they synthesize while considering the costs of eventual manufacture. 

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