Self-directed learning project - 2013/Memo 4

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The economic information below has been compiled from all the group submissions that were received by 08 November. Some groups provided very inaccurate cost estimates (numbers which when compared to typical values are wrong by several orders of magnitudes). These numbers were omitted from the summary. Other groups did not provide economic information for certain categories (e.g. labour costs, electricity costs, etc).

Your project report should include a detailed economic cost estimates for your section of the process only, using your values and estimates.

But your report must include an overall economic analysis (NPV and sensitivity) for the entire plant, using the numbers below. These economic costs certainly have error, so the sensitivity analysis is warranted.

Cost Value per year 1,2 Note
Capital costs in 2012 and 2013 $238,000,000 | 3 |- | Coal or biomass | $28,000,000 4
Electricity used $34,000,000 | |- | Electricity produced | $8,000,000
BFW $3,000,000 | |- | Cooling water | $5,700,000
Catalysts $4,500,000 | 5 |- | Oxygen | $10,000,000
LPS $5,000,000 | |- | HPS | $40,000,000
Process water $4,000,000 | |- | Labour costs | $18,000,000 6
Methanol income $260,000,000 | 7 |} # Perform your economic analysis in rounded integer values, no decimals. Also, do not work in $1000's of dollars, work in actual dollars in 2012. All costs are dollars per year (except for the capital costs, which are the initial costs). Assume the plant is built in 2012 and 2013, with production starting in 2014. You do not need to include working capital in your economics (i.e. ignore the cost to buy the initial MDEA, and other raw materials to "kick start" the process).
  1. Review your economic analysis for your section. Make sure all your costs are reported in the correct year. Note that the template will assume your capital costs are in 1970's dollars, and scale up those costs. If this is not the case for your cost estimate, then you must make adjustments to your numbers, or the spreadsheet. You will resubmit/update your costing spreadsheet for the final report, so please make any changes as your project progresses in the next several days.
  2. Gasification: $80m, water removal and syngas cleaning $28m, methanol synthesis $50m, CCS and combustion $80m.
  3. 3 groups gave the cost of biomass, and 2 groups the cost of coal. Numbers for both were roughly the same. Is this expected or unexpected?
  4. $4.5m is set aside every year, but the cost is actually incurred every 4 years (i.e. we spend $18m every 4 years to replace the catalyst). For this project treat the catalyst as an eligible, annual expense of $4.5m.
  5. Cost of labour only; costs of managers, maintenance staff, etc, is not included, but should be calculated and added in your analysis.
  6. Does this match the turnover ratio?