Fixed capital breakdown

Breakdown of fixed-capital investment items for a chemical process... 

Table 15.4 Breakdown of fixed-capital items (after Peters Timerhaus, 1991)...

Table 2.2 Breakdown of total fixed capital for large and small-scale ITM systems (the HRSG is not used in the latter system)...

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. 

Table 6.3 shows the production cost advantage of a larger plant when operated at full capacity. The larger plant provides a lower product cost whilst still meeting the desired return on total capital. However, if the unit suffers a breakdown or there is a market limitation such that the operator of the larger plant cannot sell all his potential production and has to operate at less than full output, then his cost per tonne of product will increase since his fixed costs have to be carried by the lower tonnage produced. The effect on product cost for the above 2-ethylhexanol plants operating with the larger unit achieving only 60% availability or an available market limitation of60 000 tonnes/year is shown in Table 6.4. A sales income of 690/tonne of 2-ethylhexanol is assumed to simplify the picture.

There are three major cost components fuel, bdler feed water (BFW) including freshwater, chemical treatment, pumping and heating, as well as fixed cost including capital and maintenance and environmental related costs. Table 17.2 shows the breakdown for these three costs based on fuel prices at 6/MMBtu. In this case, fuel cost is dominant, which accounts for 69%, and all other costs for 31%. 

The costs for manufacturing fuels and chemicals consist of the variable costs such as feed, catalysts and energy. The variable costs depend on the actual consumption (and thus on the utilization degree) and also on the price of the various streams needed for production. The fixed costs include labor, maintenance, overhead, and above all the provision to recover the investment of the plant and lost interest (capital expenditure). Table 5.5.5 shows a breakdown of operating costs for the example of an ethylene oxide (EO) plant. 

Table 5.5.6 Breakdown of capital-related fixed costs [data from Baerns et al. (2006)].. ...

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