Scale-up of Manufacturing Expenses

Some noteworthy similarities exist between wind energy systems and CPV systems.9 They both employ relatively common materials, particularly steel. Wind system costs are typically less than 1 per watt they depend mainly on the cost of steel, whereas flat-plate PV is linked to the availability and cost of expensive semiconductor silicon. But solar concentrator structures are also amenable to an auto-assembly type of production (see Fig. 5), and CPV developers estimate CPV production facility costs are much closer to those of wind systems than to those of flat-plate PV production facilities. In early EPRI cost studies, CPV production facility costs were estimated (on the same costing basis as the crystalline and amorphous silicon facilities) to be about 28 million for a 100 MW per year installation—about one-quarter the cost of the conventional silicon PV facilities.10 These lower investment costs can lead to a faster scale-up of manufacturing facilities because investor risk is relatively smaller than the risks entailed in investing in conventional PV production facilities. 

An alternative source of the ethyl component was ethyl bromide, a less expensive material. It was at this point that GM called upon DuPont to take over process development. DuPont was the largest U.S. chemical company at the time. It had extensive experience in the scale-up of complex chemical operations, including explosives and high-pressure synthesis. The manufacturing process was undertaken by DuPont s premier department, the Organic Chemical section. GM contracted with DuPont to build a 1,300 pound per day plant. The first commercial quantities of TEL were sold in Februai-y 1923 in the form of ethyl premium gasoline. 

Raw materials and auxiliary products used in a process as well as materials of construction for equipment items can be the eause of scale-up effects . Pure raw and auxiliary materials must be used in laboratory studies to eliminate the influence of impurities on the ehoice of the process route, catalyst selection, and search for satisfactory process conditions. However, pure chemicals are usually too expensive to use for manufacture on a commercial scale. It is common practice to use raw materials of technical grade in a full-scale plant. These materials contain impurities, which can act as catalysts or inhibitors. They can react with reactants or intermediates, thereby decreasing yields and selectivities of desired produets. Therefore, raw materials of technical grade, even from different suppliers must first be tested on laboratory scale. 

Development of the dehydrogenation reaction There remained obstacles in making the dehydrogenation reaction practical for manufacturing. The reaction worked best in dioxane, not a suitable solvent for production. BSTFA and DDQ were both expensive and difficult to obtain in the purity required. Considerable effort was invested at this stage in search of a reagent/solvent system that was practical for scale-up. 

Many factors act together to determine the optimum scale of a process. These include the demand for the product, competitors share of the market, any technical limitations on the size of operation and also economies of scale effects. There is an approximate logarithmic relationship between the unit production costs for a product and the volume of production, whereby considerable economies of scale can be achieved. If the costs of a process of one size (C ) is known then the costs of larger or smaller factories (C ) can be approximately obtained from the relationship C = Cx (or n° ), where n is the scale-up ratio, i.e. n=l for a plant that is twice as big. Alternatively, a graph of log capital costs vs. log of plant capacity gives a straight line with a slope equal to the scale-up factor (n). The power term varies from case to case, but is invariably less than one. This scale effect is one reason why unit production costs are inversely proportional to the scale of manufacture. For example, most amino acids are expensive and can only be used in... 

There are many advantages for choosing to develop and scale-up a capsule formulation over a tablet. As there is no need to form a compact that must withstand rigorous handling, development timelines can be reduced. Encapsulated products allow for easier blinding of clinical supplies and the ability to manufacture unique fills such as tablets in capsules, sustained release pellets, liquids, or semisolids. However, the costs of the capsule shells add an additional expense above the costs of tablet manufacture. 

These scale-up issues present some of the more difficult challenges in crystallization processes, as they do for other engineering operations. In most cases, the products obtained may be handled but with increased capital and operating expense for the cumbersome downstream operations. These costs may exceed those of the other steps in a manufacturing operation. In extreme cases, the products may be unsuitable for commercial use because of the poor physical properties discussed above. 

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