Recovering projects

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Ultimately, the process might be permanently shut down or given a major revamp. This marks the end of the project, H. If the process is shut down, working capital is recovered, and there may be salvage value, which would create a final cash inflow at the end of the project. 

Once production commences (possibly 3-8 years after the first capex) gross revenues are received from the sale of the hydrocarbons. These revenues are used to recover the capital expenditure (capex) of the project, to pay for the operating expenditure (opex) of the project (e.g. manpower, maintenance, equipment running costs, support costs), and to provide the host government take which may in the simplest case be in the form of taxes and royalty. 

At the end of the project life a residual unrecovered asset value will remain. This is usually accepted in full as a capital allowance in the final year of the project. Hence the total asset value is fully recovered over the life of the field, but at a slower rate than in the straight line method. 

MSW incinerators (qv) are typically designed to reduce the volume of soHd waste and to generate electricity in condensing power stations. Incineration of unprocessed municipal waste alone recovers energy from about 34,500 t/d or 109 million metric tons of MSW aimuaHy in some 74 incinerators throughout the United States. This represents 1.1 EJ (1.05 x 10 Btu) of energy recovered aimuaHy (18). Additionally there are some 20 RDE facihties processing from 200 to 2000 t/d of MSW into a more refined fuel (19). Representative projects are shown in Table 10. 

The first commercial plant to use CYANEX 272 became operational in 1985. An additional three plants were constmcted between 1985 and 1989. Of the four, one is in South America and three in Europe. An additional three plants have been built two in Europe (1994) and one in North America (1995). Approximately 50% of the Western world s cobalt is processed using CYANEX 272. Both high purity salts and electrolytic cobalt metal are recovered from solutions ranging in composition from 30 g/L each of cobalt and nickel to 0.2 g/L Co, 95 g/L Ni Operating companies usually regard use of CYANEX 272 as confidential for competitive reasons and identities cannot be disclosed. CYANEX 272 is being evaluated on the pilot-plant scale in many additional projects involving the recovery of cobalt and other metals. 

Propylene has many commercial and potential uses. The actual utilisation of a particular propylene supply depends not only on the relative economics of the petrochemicals and the value of propylene in various uses, but also on the location of the supply and the form in which the propylene is available. Eor example, economics dictate that recovery of high purity propylene for polymerisation from a smaH-volume, dilute off-gas stream is not feasible, whereas polymer-grade propylene is routinely recovered from large refineries and olefins steam crackers. A synthetic fuels project located in the western United States might use propylene as fuel rather than recover it for petrochemical use a plant on the Gulf Coast would recover it (see Euels, synthetic). 

In 1993, nearly 36 million tons of paper were recovered in the United States, twice as much as in 1980 (54). Eor the first time, more paper was recovered in the United States than landfilled. As a result, 11 million fewer tons of paper were landfilled in the United States in 1993 than in 1987. This saved more than 69 X 10 m (90 x 10 yd ) of landfill space. In 1995, recovered paper accounted for 31.5% of the fiber used to manufacture 84.1 million metric tons of paper products (54). Annual capital spending for paper recycling projects from 1995 to the year 2000 is estimated to average 2 biUion (55). The American Eorest Paper Association (AE PA) estimates U.S. consumption of recovered paper will increase 4.9% per year through the year 2000, nearly twice the total paper industry capacity growth rate (56). Consumption of recovered paper in U.S. mills in 1997 is estimated at 35.6 million tons (57). 

The 1990 Amendments to the U.S. Clean Air Act require a 50% reduction of sulfur dioxide emissions by the year 2000. Electric power stations are beheved to be the source of 70% of all sulfur dioxide emissions (see Power generation). As of the mid-1990s, no utiUties were recovering commercial quantities of elemental sulfur ia the United States. Two projects had been aimounced Tampa Electric Company s plan to recover 75,000—90,000 metric tons of sulfuric acid (25,000—30,000 metric tons sulfur equivalent) aimuaHy at its power plant ia Polk County, Elorida, and a full-scale sulfur recovery system to be iastaHed at PSl Energy s Wabash River generating station ia Terre Haute, Indiana. Completed ia 1995, the Terre Haute plant should recover about 14,000 t/yr of elemental sulfur. 

The payback-period method takes no account of cash flows or profits received after the breakeven point has been reached. The method is based on the premise that the earher the fixed capital is recovered, the better the project. However, this approach can Be misleading. 

Let us consider projects A and B, having net annual cash flows as listed in Table 9-2. Both projects have initial fixed-capital expenditures of 100,000. On the basis of payback period, project A is the more desirable since the fixed-capital expenditure is recovered in 3 years, compared with 5 years for projec t B. However, project B runs for 7 years with a cumulative net cash flow of 110,000. This is obviously more profitable than project A, which runs for only 4 years with a cumulative net cash flow of only 10,000. 

In the final year of the project, the working capital and the laud are recovered, which in this case cost a total of 100,000. Thus, in the final year of the project, Afc = — 100,000 and —Afc = + 100,000. From Eq. (9-4), it is seen that any capital recoveiy makes a positive contribution to the net annual cash flow. 

Capital is at risk until the breakeven point has been reached. It is common practice to give consideration to the discounted breakeven point (DEEP), the time at which the (NPV) is zero when discounting at the cost of capital. At any time after the (DEEP), the project will have recovered its cost and provided a greater return on the capital than the cost of capital. It is customary for management to spread risk by diversifying the activities of a company among a portfoho of projects. 

Now that you have determined the likely savings in terms of annual process and waste-treatment operating costs associated with each option, consider the necessary investment required to implement each option. Investment can be assessed by looking at the payback period for each option that is, the time taken for a project to recover its financial outlay. A more detailed investment analysis may involve an assessment of the internal rate of return (IRR) and net present value (NPV) of the investment based on discounted cash flows. An analysis of investment risk allows you to rank the options identified. 

Parts of the tank were projected to distances up to 360 m (1200 ft). Twenty-two pieces of the tank were recovered, constituting approximately 80% of the original tank. Debris was found clustered in two separate areas, namely, within the radii of 5° to 20° and 65° to 95° from the car s direction of movement. Three empty tank cars located up to a distance of three railroad tracks from the exploded car were blown from the rails. The undercarriage of the car was bent into a V-shape (see Figure 2.1). One person was killed in the explosion. Analysis of a recovered piece of the tank car showed that failure was due to brittle fracture. 

An overall economic evaluation must be made to ensure that the contemplated project for petroleum development will recover sufficient capital to pay for the total cost of development, installation and assembly effort of the company. Further, the capital return must yield a financial return consistent with the overall company risk involved. Thus, it is very important that the petroleum engineer designing a recovery system understand the company s evaluation criteria that will be used by management in judging whether a new project is to go forward. Chapter 7 (Petroleum Economics) has detailed discussions of general engineering economics and product (or project) evaluation criteria. 

When the project begins to fall behind in schedule, three alternatives may correct the problem. The first is to examine the work remaining to be done and decide whether the lost time can be recovered in the next steps. If this is not feasible, consider offering an incentive for on-time completion of the project. The incentive could be justified if you compare this expenditure to potential losses due to late completion. Finally, consider deploying more resources. This too will cost more, but may offset further losses from delayed completion. 

Recover during later steps If you begin to fall behind in early stages of a project, re-examine budgets and schedules for later stages. Perhaps you can save on later stages so the overall budget and/or schedule is met. X X... 

At one stage in our project we were surprised to learn that some workers had found difficulties in preparing the tetroxide from the dioxide, until we experienced the same trouble. This problem has now been resolved (3). Ruthenium dioxide is available commercially in both anhydrous and hydrated forms, the former being obtained by direct oxidation of ruthenium metal and the latter by a precipitation process. Only the hydrated form is oxidizable under the mild conditions (2,3) that we use and this form must be specified when purchasing the dioxide. It is noteworthy that the dioxide recovered from carbohydrate oxidations is always easily re-oxidized to the tetroxide. The stoichiometry has been determined of both the oxidation of the dioxide by periodate and reduction of the tetroxide which results on oxidation of an alcohol. 

Large-scale plutonium recovery/processing facilities originated at Los Alamos and Hanford as part of the Manhattan Project in 1943. Hanford Operations separated plutonium from irradiated reactor fuel, whereas Los Alamos purified plutonium, as well as recovered the plutonium from scrap and residues. In the 1950 s, similar processing facilities were constructed at Rocky Flats and Savannah River. 

Environmental benefits of Emission Controls. Information in Figure 5 illustrate that the emission of sulphur in eastern North America has declined over the past decade. This decline allows for a possible verification of the dose-response relationships on which the environmental concerns for emissions have been based. A decline in sulphate deposition in Nova Scotia has apparently resulted in a decrease in acidity of eleven rivers over the period 1971-73 to 1981-82 (47), In the Sudbury, Ontario area where emissions have dechned by over 50% between 1974-76 and 1981-83, a resurvey of 209 lakes shows that most lakes have now become less acidic. Twenty-one lakes that had a pH < 5.5 in 1974-76 showed an average decline in acidity of 0.3 pH units over the period (48), Surveys of 54 lakes in the Algoma region of Ontario have shown a rapid response to a decline in sulphate deposition. Two lakes without fish in 1979 have recovered populations as pH of the water moved above 5.5 (49). Evidence is accumulating to support the hypothesis of benefits that were projected as a consequence of emission controls. This provides increased confidence in the projections. 

A three-year joint European project, RECAM, recommends that it should be possible to colleet more than 50% of carpet waste in Western Europe. High-grade materials such as PA and PP could be recovered for the manufacture of engineering plastics compounds and more than 8 million Gigajoules of energy could be reeovered from the remainder. At the heart of the proj ect are ehemieal recycling processes developed by both DSM and Enichem. 

There are a number of routes for recovering and reeyeling of materials from thermoset composites. With the exception of the ERCOM project none of these are particularly well developed. The most promising for development are innovative comminution techniques for the preparation of relatively uncontaminated forms of scrap as a reinforcement for development of high value... 

The use is described of a process involving both hydrolysis and pyrolysis to recover caprolactam from nylon 6 used in carpet fibres. By means of precise temperature control and the use of a catalyst, nylon 6 can be isolated from the PP backing. The process has been developed by the National Renewable Resource Laboratory, and interest has been shown by AlliedSignal who are considering a cooperative research and development project. 

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