Profitability economic balance

Finally, since engineers must be concerned with making money in a chemical process, the economic balance equations must also be solved along with the above equations. Managers fiequently beheve that the preceding equations are not important at all, and that one should only worry about profit and loss. The problem with this idea is that these equations underhe any economic considerations. 

A specific batch bioreactor application depends on multiple internal and external factors however, general rules of thumb and process-specific improvements can be employed to make a smarter and more profitable selection. Batch bioreactor selectivity is based on the following factors economic balance, production scale, reaction times, production flexibility, and the nature of the process and product (Donati and Paludetto, 1999). Typically, batch bioreactors are used for smaller operations, specialty products, long growth periods (bioreactor of choice by elimination), operations in which flexibility is vital, unsteady processes, and experimental development (Donati and Paludetto, 1999 Simon et al., 2006 Williams, 2002). 

From an overall economic viewpoint, any investment proposal may be considered as an activity which initially absorbs funds and later generates money. The funds may be raised from loan capital or from shareholders capital, and the net (after tax and costs) money generated may be used to repay interest on loans and loan capital, with the balance being due to the shareholders. The shareholders profit can either be paid out as dividends, or reinvested in the company to fund the existing venture or new ventures. The following diagram indicates the overall flow of funds for a proposed project. The detailed cash movements are contained within the box labelled the project . 

Remember, too, that treatment is a business enterprise, and because of this many treatment centers are concerned about the bottom line. Some treatment centers provide high-quality programs, but in other instances the concern about economics overrides concern about client care. This is not a knock on the treatment industry, because the balancing act among economic solvency, profit, and quality of services is true across all other types of health care as well. As a matter of self-protection, try to judge for yourself whether the program you are contemplating has your best interests at heart. 

The ability to understand and apply the concepts of cost analysis, profitability analysis, budgets, income-and-expense statements, and balance sheets are key skills that may be valuable. This section treats two major components of economic... 

A plant operating according to the Hamburg University pyrolysis process was built at Ebenhausen, with a capacity of 5000 tonnes per year. The feasibility of converting poly-oleflns by pyrolysis was successfully demonstrated, with yields from PE/PP mixtures of typically 51% (m/m) gas, 42% (m/m) liquids and the balance unaccounted for. However, the gas to liquids ratio is very sensitive to pyrolysis temperature. Since gas and oil are the major pyrolysis products, economic viability crucially depends on the price of crude oil. Under present conditions, profitability and economic viability are unsatisfactory at this small scale of operation. 

The benefits of pesticides are social and economic. Social components are human health, availability of food, quality of life, and protection of the environment. Economic factors are loss of harvest, profitability of agriculture, and revenue of the industry. Some social factors are directly related to economic factors. If a farmer cannot make a living on his farm, he and his family must leave the land and migrate to the city, a process that occurs very frequently everywhere in the world. If the agrochemical industry does not make a profit, the factories must close down and the employees lose their jobs. If food becomes scarce prices go up and people with low incomes cannot afford a balanced diet or may even starve. 

From an economic point of view, the break-even point of a process operation is defined as that condition when the costs (C) exactly balance the income (/). The profit P) is therefore P = I — C. At break-even, the profit is zero. 

Project evaluation enables the technical and economic feasibility of a chemical process to be assessed using preliminary process design and economic evaluations. Once a process flowsheet is available, these evaluations can be classified into several steps material balance calculations, equipment sizing, equipment cost determination, utilities requirements, investment cost estimation, sales volume forecasting, manufacturing cost estimation, and finally profitability and sensitivity analysis. 

The pretax profit margin declined from 14.9% in 1997 to 11.0% in 1998 as a result of declines in polyethylene and ethylene glycol margins, new ethylene industry capacity, and the Asian economic crisis (Table 7.21). In 1998 the company s returns on assets and equity (Tables 7.21 and 7.24) were about the same as the median values for 37 chemical companies. Table 7.22 is a summary of balance sheet and income statement statistics. 

In addition to the cost balance shown in Table 4, the electric arc furnace operators benefit from an additional recycling fee of between 50 and 100 per tonne of batteries recycled, dependant upon quantity and other commercial factors. At an addition of 1% of scrap weight this is equivalent to a cost reduction of 6 1 per tonne of scrap and, hence, typically equal to 1.1 per tonne of product. This is a very significant additional economic benefit for the operator. In some cases, a proportion of this profit is allocated by agreement with local environment agencies, to additional environmental improvements within the facility. 

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