Cost estimation step counting method

Step counting estimating methods provide a way of making a quick, order of magnitude, estimate of the capital cost of a proposed project. 

A crede method of very preliminary capita] estimation is to count the number of processing steps required and multiply by the capacity and a cost factor. While such a method is not recommended for anything other than vety preliminary qualitative thinking, it does point out the feet that capital is related directly to the number of steps in the complete process. A method of separation that can accomplish a oomplete separation in a single step is usually a lower capital process than one that requires a number of steps. The number of steps associated with the various separation methods is discussed in Section 22.2-6. 

---