Production cost components

Hignett (Ref. CEI 1) is an excellent source for the determination of production and operating costs specific to nitric acid manufacture. It contains tabulated data for the typical production cost components and capital cost details of a 1700 tonnes/day plant. These figures could be compared with those presented in Ref. PTI for determination of an accuratevalue for the 280 tonne/day plant in this project. 

Source of funds Rate — cost (%) Proportion of total (%) Product = cost component... 

The economic importance of an ore deposit itself is largely affected by mineral or metal prices. Mine closures and reopenings are a common event in the mineral iadustry for this reason. Economics can also be affected by the ore composition, for example, by unacceptable levels of penalty elements ia the ore. The assessment of overall economics of exploiting a given ore deposit is similar to that for any large-scale industry. The various cost components are those associated with equipment, labor, utiUties, contingencies, operation and production, transportation, working capital, suppHes, maintenance. 

It is in the second two of these cost components that, in relation to other materials, plastics can offer particular advantages. Fabrication costs include power, labour, consumables, etc and Table 1.10 shows that, in terms of the overall energy consumption, plastics come out much better than metals. Performance costs relate to servicing, warranty claims, etc. On this basis plastics can be very attractive to industries manufacturing consumer products because they can offer advantages such as colour fasmess, resilience, toughness, corrosion resistance and uniform quality - all features which help to ensure a reliable product. 

In the past decades, polymer materials have been continuously replacing more traditional materials such as paper, metal, glass, stone, wood, natural fibres and natural rubber in the fields of clothing industry, E E components, automotive materials, aeronautics, leisure, food packaging, sports goods, etc. Without the existence of suitable polymer materials progress in many of these areas would have been limited. Polymer materials are appreciated for their chemical, physical and economical qualities including low production cost, safety aspects and low environmental impact (cf. life-cycle analysis). 

The various components of the operating costs are summarised in Table 6.6. The typical values given in this table can be used to make an approximate estimate of production costs. 

Some optimization techniques minimize the cost of product of a system or a component. The optimum total production cost rate with respect to NTU is obtained from... 

Cost of a product for component j is based on a fuel/product basis ( IP = Cjp f, so that the total cost of products is (Erlach et al., 1999)... 

Feed, product and intermediate storage can be very significant cost components. 

In general, microsomes/S9 and cofactor (NADPH or UDPG A) are the most costly components of an incubation, but substrate, especially for early discovery compounds, is sometimes scarce. Higher enzyme concentration will lead to higher volume productivity and less amount of the cofactor to maintain the same cofactor concentration. However, the relationship of reaction rate and enzyme concentration may not be linear, so a higher enzyme concentration may yield lower enzyme productivity (amount of product per milligram enzyme used). Therefore, different protein concentration levels should be screened to obtain a good balance between volume and enzyme productivities. 

Extraction of PHA from plants is likely to be a major factor affecting the production cost of PHA from crops and, therefore, the economic viability of this approach. In contrast to production of PHA from bacterial fermentation, where the production system is designed to produce only PHA, an agricultural production of PHA is likely to be most viable only through the recovery of not only PHA but also all other useful components of the harvested crop, i.e., oil, proteins, and carbohydrates. This fact, combined with the lower level of PHA accumulation in plants in comparison to micro-organism, is likely to make PHA recovery from plants a challenging task. 

In addition to the urgent problem of capacity, manufacturers have to cope with the operating costs of production, which are increased by the need for skilled personnel and expensive media components. Another cost driver is the inherent contamination risk when using mammalian cell culture systems. All materials must be checked closely for bacterial and viral contamination, and the presence of prions and endotoxins. This affects not only the manufacturing process, but also downstream materials and even human semm albumin (HSA) used for formulations. In the end, production costs add up to 100-1000 per gram of therapeutic protein. 

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