Process engineering equipment costs

Tables 14.18.1 and 14.18.2 give the reported solvent releases and transfers from the organie ehemieal industry. Large quantities of solvents are involved. The organic chemical industry produced the second largest quantity of VOC and the second largest releases and transfers. The industry is actively working to reduee solvent use because of the high costs (waste treatment, fines, liabilities, etc). There are many efforts under way to reduce environmental emissions and improve safe practices. The initiatives include process modifications such as a reduction in non-reactive materials (e.g., solvents) to improve process efficiency, a reduction in the concentration of chemicals in aqueous solution, and improved R D and process engineering. Equipment modifications are planned to reduce leaks, prevent equipment breakdown, and improve die efficiency of emission control devices.

Spreadsheet Applications. The types of appHcations handled with spreadsheets are a microcosm of the types of problems and situations handled with fuU-blown appHcation programs that are mn on microcomputers, minis, and mainframes and include engineering computations, process simulation, equipment design and rating, process optimization, reactor kinetics—design, cost estimation, feedback control, data analysis, and unsteady-state simulation (eg, batch distillation optimization). 

Figure 1-36. Process engineering costs (1975), based on process engineering charged at 14 per manhour. Chemical plant engineering operations, includes flowsheet development and drafting, material and heat balances, equipment designs, ratings, checking, and bid reviews and selection of equipment. By permission, E. E. Ludwig [7].

Marshall and Swift Equipment Cost Index [57]. Commonly used for process industry equipment and index numbers presented by industries in Chemical Engineering Magazine on a monthly basis. 

Fixed costs are those elements of piece cost that are a function of the annual production volume. Fixed costs are called fixed because they typically represent one-time capital investments (buildings, silos, processing machines, etc.) or annual expenses unaffected by the number of products produced (building rent, engineering support, administrative personnel, etc.). Typically, these costs are distributed over the total number of products produced in a given period. For plastics processes the principal elements are main machine cost, auxiliary equipment cost, tooling cost, building cost, overhead labor cost, maintenance cost, and the cost of capital. 

Phil Horwitz asked me to comment on what I saw as potential disadvantages of the various plutonium pyrochemical processes extolled by speakers in the Tuesday sessions. I, too, am a fan of pyrochemical techniques. I recognize that pyrochemical processes for Pu processing are just in their infancy - on batch plant-scale. To be truly useful, such processes need to be operated on a continuous basis. Scientists and engineers concerned with such technology need to develop equipment and procedures required to operate pyrochemical processes in a cost-effective, continuous manner."... 

A composite index for the United States process plant industry is published monthly in the journal Chemical Engineering, the CPE plant cost index. This journal also publishes the Marshall and Swift index (M and S equipment cost index), base year 1926. The CPE index over a ten-year period is shown in Figure 6.1 b. 

Almost all the information on costs available in the open literature is in American journals and refers to dollar prices in the US. Some UK equipment prices were published in the journals British Chemical Engineering and Chemical and Process Engineering before they ceased publication. The only comprehensive collection of UK prices available is given in the Institution of Chemical Engineers booklet, IChemE (2000). 

Marshall and Swift Equipment Cost (formerly Marshall and Stevens Index) Chemical Process Industries Output Chemical Engineering... 

Stevens, R.W. Equipment Cost Indexes for Process Industries, Chemical Engineering, Nov. 

CHEMCOST. Process Equipment Cost Estimation. Icarus Corp., Rockville, MD (1999). Garrett, D. E. Chemical Engineering Economics. Kluwer, New York (1989). 

In 1992, researchers developed an engineering and costing design for a fixed unit that operated at a rate of 2 tons per hour. Costs were estimated to be 149 (Canadian) per metric ton of soil treated. This estimate was based on the following assumptions the unit used medium naphtha as a solvent operations were 24 hours per day, for 260 days per year utilization factor of the facility was 83% capital costs were 2,548 million (Canadian) and capital amortized over 10 years at 10%, two payments per year. The estimate stipulated that the recovered oil was of suitable quality to be sold to offset process costs. It was estimated that the largest component of process costs would be labor ( 56 per ton of waste treated). Other cost components listed were capitalization costs ( 38 per ton), utilities ( 29 per ton), insurance ( 9 per ton), trucking and maintenance (each 5 per ton), equipment rental and site excavation and restoration (each 3 per ton), and waste disposal was estimated to cost 1 per ton (D17896F, p. 8). 

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