Other investment costs

The working capital is described in detail in the next chapter. It includes the initial investment in temporary and consumable materials, as well as cash for initial payments of salaries and other operating expenses, prior to the receipt of payments for plant products. These other costs, which represent a significant fraction of the total capital investment, are considered next. 

Spares, Storage Tanks, Surge Vessels, and Catalyst Costs 

Costs for service facilities, Cjen, include utility lines, control rooms, laboratories for feed and product testing, maintenance shops, and other buildings. Service facility costs can be substantial for a grass-roots plant when administrative offices, medical facilities, cafeterias, garages, and warehouses are needed. 

Allocated costs, Cgnoo nre included to provide or upgrade off-site utility plants (steam, electricity, cooling water, process water, boiler feed water, leMgeration, inert gas, fuels, etc.) and related facilities for liquid waste disposal, solids waste disposal, off-gas treatment, and wastewater treatment. Some typical capital investment costs for utility plants, estimated by Busche (1995), are shown in Table 16.12. Cogeneration plants can provide both steam and electricity by burning a fuel. When utilities, such as electricity, are purchased firom vendors at so many cents per kilowatt-hour, that cost includes the vendor investment cost. Thus, a capital cost for the plant is then not included in the capital cost estimate. 

Contingencies are unanticipated costs incurred during the construction of a plant To account for the cost of contingencies, it is common to set aside 15% of the direct permanent investment, C0PI, which is comprised of the components in Table 16.9. In addition, Guthrie (1969) adds a contractor fee of 3% of the direct permanent investment. When this total of 18%, designated is added, the total depreciable capital, Cxdc obtained. 

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Land costs, resulting from much higher production capacity and/or number of products per unit of manufacturing area Other investment costs, resulting from cheaper, compact equipment, reduced piping, reduced civic works, integrated processing units, etc. 

Table 16.15 continues the cost estimate to obtain the total capital investment. After all other investment costs are added to the total bare-module cost of the on-site equipment, the total capital investment becomes 179,730,000. The total permanent investment is 169,640,000, which is a factor of 5.38 times the total f.o.b purchase cost of the on-site process equipment. The start-up cost here is taken as 8% of Ctdc-... 

Most large electrochemical processing faciHties are located where raw materials, including electric power, are readily available at reasonable costs. Other factors influencing the location of electrochemical plants are proximity to markets, estabHshed transportation faciHties, availabiHty of water, and a source of labor. Large electrochemical plants are capital intensive, requiring large capital investment cost per employee. 

Although the reasoning seems sound, opportunity costs are not really expenses. Though it is true that the cash will be unavailable for other investments, opportunity cost should be thought of as a comparison criteria and not an expense. The opportunity forgone by using the cash is considered when the project competes for funds and is expressed by one of the financial analysis factors discussed earlier (net value of present worth, pay back period, etc.). It is this competition for company funds that encompasses opportunity cost, so opportunity cost should not be accounted directly against the project s benefits. 

This cost is very low, compared to other estimates. This may be due to the fact that Zevnik and Buchanan assume a single-train plant, whereas the plant just designed has two trains. If this assumption is made, the direct investment cost of a functional unit for a 75,000,000 lb/yr plant would be 280,000. Making the same calculations as before, the cost of a 75,000,000 lb/yr plant would be 4,400,000. The cost of two such plants would be 8,800,000. This is still low. 

This process (see Fig. 14.3) was chosen because of the lowest variable and investment costs compared with the other options. This is a process without emissions - which is another great advantage. Bromide is discharged from the process by the cell-liquor. A small increase of bromide and chlorate concentrations in the cell-liquor is therefore expected. 

This price is relatively high on account of the small number of pigs. Other calculations show that the investment costs are lower in comparable stalls with a capacity for 480 and 960 pigs. These stalls are more common, the costs are respectively 18 and 11/pigplace. 

We thus are left with four main parameters the analysis time, the inlet pressure, the column length, and the particle diameter. The first two are measures for the cost" of each analysis in terms of time and pressure (cost of operation) whereas the choice of the other two determines the cost of the column (investment cost). In most applications, such as routine analyses, the latter will be small in comparison to the cost of operation and little attention is paid to the cost of the column, as long as it is possible to prepare it without additional research and investment. On ilie otlici hand, in rcseaich work t rien a lew separaliuns are petIbitiled... 

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