Cost of equipment

Thermal transfer printers are relatively complex, both mechanically and electronically. In addition to precise mechanisms they require sophisticated electronics for networking and PostScript interpretation. Cost of equipment and consumables ( 0.50— 1.00 per page) is relatively high. 

Example 1 Capitalized Cost of Equipment Apiece of equipment has been installed at a cost of 100,000 and is expected to have a working life of 10 years with a scrap value of 20,000. Let us calculate the capitalized cost of the equipment based on an annual compound-interest rate of 5 percent. 

I. Oversimplification by correlating the cost of equipment in terms of a single variable... 

The method uses a breakdown of costs for a typical chemical plant installed in the United States, as shown in Fig. 9-44. Costs of equipment, appurtenances, construction, and engineering with material and labor separate are given as a percentage of total installed United States costs. The four components of cost are defined as follows ... 

Because crystallizers can come with such a wide variety of attachments, capacities, materials of constrnc tion, and designs, it is very difficult to present an accurate picture of the costs for any except certain specific types of equipment, ciystallizing specific compounds. This is illustrated in Fig. 18-75, which shows the prices of equipment for ciystallizing two different compounds at various production rates, one of the compounds being produced in two alternative crystallizer modes. Installed cost (including cost of equipment and accessories, foundations and supporting steel, utility piping. 

BIL of the equipment to be protected, from Table 13.3 list I (considering the lower side to save on the cost of equipment)... 

The volatile solvents recoverable by the activated carbon system or any other system are nearly all organic, and many of them form flammable or explosive mixtures with air. Such mixtures may lie between upper and lower explosive limits. The activated carbon system can avoid the explosive range by staying well below the lowest percentage of vapor which is still explosive it functions well at very low concentrations. The system also recovers solvents efficiently even in the presence of water the recovery efficiency is high (98 percent and 99 percent are not unusual) it may be fully automatic. The annual maintenance charge rarely exceeds 5 percent of the cost of equipment. The recovery expense may be as low as 0.2 cent per pound in some installations it rarely exceeds 1 cent per pound. 

The cost of equipment determines the capital investment for a process operation. However, there is no direct relationship to profits. That is, more expensive equipment may mean better quality, more durability and, hence, longer service and maintenance factors. These characteristics can produce higher operating efficiencies, fewer consumption coefficients and operational expenses and, thus, fewer net production costs. The net cost of production characterizes the perfection rate of the total technological process and reflects the influences of design indices. Therefore, it is possible to compare different pieces of equipment when they are used in the manufacture of these same products. 

Size Factoring Exponents It is possible to estimate the cost of equipment from the cost of a similar piece of equipment with different size using size factoring or scaling exponents as follows ... 

Bid evaluations must include a study of the peculiar costs expected to be associated with a given unit, and these include first cost of equipment, power (or driver) operating costs, maintenance for entire unit, foundations, special structural limitations, pipe layout, and perhaps others. 

Motors used in industrial operations are predominantly of the induction type. The voltage at which they will be supplied will depend on the rating of the motor, the voltages available on-site and the capital cost of equipment. In general, the following voltage/load ranges apply ... 

Expenses associated with the capital cost of equipment. Depreciation will be provided over the useful life of the equipment, varying according to the engineer s estimate. Present-day custom is to write assets down on a straight-line basis, but there are several accepted ways of providing the necessary depletion of the asset value. 

Correlation coefficient critical values (T) 842 Costs of equipment 11 Coulomb 504, 529 Coulometer 531... 

In time, of course, it will suffer wear and tear and eventually become unusable. Its life will also be shortened by obsolescence, a very important factor. A 50 year old two-pan analytical balance, for example, may be in perfect working order, but its value is only that of an antique. The cost of equipment will also determine whether or not it should be capitalized. Rules for this will vary from one laboratory to another. 

Some costs are easy to estimate, such as wages and salaries or utilities. The cost of equipment service is often overlooked, as is the cost of replacement parts. Lamps for atomic absorption instruments, for example, have finite lives and are quite costly to replace. Electrodes for pH meters and other instrument components all need periodic replacement. 

In educational laboratories, the consumption of supplies per student should be quite predictable for any given course. The cost of equipment maintenance and replacement, however, is often underestimated. Unfortunately, in a college budget system, the reward for saving money one year may be a reduced budget the following year. 

To a first approximation, the cost of a single MPI is assumed to vary with scale (vessel volume or process throughput) on an exponent of 0.7. The value of this exponent does vary from one plant item type to another and while it typically lies in the range 0.5-0.9 [40, 42] for some equipment types (e.g., centrifuges) it may be at or above unity. This indicates that the purchased cost of equipment per unit production rate, say /(tons per year), generally increases as manufacturing scale decreases well known as economies of scale, related to large bulk chemical plants. 

The minimal cost of equipment was used as the criterion in the design of the plant, which was to be operated in a non-overlapping mode. For a plant consisting of MB true batch units (MS = 3) and MS semi-continuous units (MS = 5) which are grouped in MST semi-continuous trains (MST = 3), the cycle time is given by Eqn. (7.4-10). Combining this expression with Eqn. (7.4-22) and rearranging yields ... 

Using Eqn. (7..7-4) to calculate the purchased cost of equipment, the following expression is obtained for the total equipment costs ... 

Various criteria were proposed for the optimal selection of the equipment configuration and the number and sizes of units. In grass-root design, the capital cost of equipment is mostly used as the optimization criterion. In retrofit design a more appropriate objective function seems to be the net profit, which has to be maximized. Papageorgaki and Reklaitis (1993) formulated the criterion as follows ... 

The estimated cost of equipment, labor, and herbicides for weed control within a specific crop can be very expensive. For example, in 1980, cotton was planted on 5.2 million ha in the United States. The total cost for equipment, labor, and herbicides used to control weeds was estimated to be 547 million (20). Herbicides account for 32% of the total cost while equipment and labor costs were 34% each. 

To make a more accurate estimate, the cost factors that are compounded into the Lang factor are considered individually. The direct-cost items that are incurred in the construction of a plant, in addition to the cost of equipment are ... 

The relative cost of equipment made from different materials will depend on the cost of fabrication, as well as the basic cost of the material. Unless a particular material requires special fabrication techniques, the relative cost of the finished equipment will be lower than the relative bare material cost. For example the purchased cost of a stainless-steel storage tank will be 2 to 3 times the cost of the same tank in carbon steel, whereas the relative cost of the metals is between 5 to 8. 

Expenditures for insecticides alone are not an accurate index of the cost of insect control. Many control practices do not involve the use of chemicals. Where chemicals are used considerable labor is required. To this must be added operation, maintenance, and investment costs of equipment needed to apply them. When these are taken into account the cost of control increases several times. In 1938 Hyslop (2) estimated that the cost of controlling the more important insect pests was 142,927,000. 

Materials of construction have a significant influence on the capital cost of equipment. Table 2.2 gives some approximate average factors to relate the different materials of construction for equipment capital cost. 

The premise upon which the Lang factors are based is that the equipment costs are a certain fraction of the total cost of the plant. Or conversely, it can be said that the costs of piping, insulation, wiring, site preparation, and so on are a function of the cost of the equipment. However, the cost of equipment is very dependent on the materials used to make it, while most of the other items listed in Table 9-6 are not dependent on materials. 

Case Study Capital Cost Estimation Cost of Equipment... 

Detailed and accurate costs of equipment, overhead, labor, utilities, materials and products are at least a voluminous matter. The problems here are necessarily simplified but they do compare pertinent kinds of factors. Some of the data are in MU (money units) rather than dollars, since the latter have varied greatly in recent years, and the specific problems have arisen over some time. 

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