Jonathan Himelspach

9/18/15
Formaldehyde CapCost Project
The current formaldehyde operation is quite profitable, the project will break
even at around year 2; this is projected in the CFD in figure 1. This calculation was
done by finding the price of formaldehyde and then entering the product flow rate.
The price given for formaldehyde online was provided by ICIS and was actually the
price of the diluted formaldehyde to 1/3 but the inputted stream of formaldehyde in
CapCost is pure so the input price was the ICIS given priced multiplied by three. The
methanol waste stream was put into CapCost. The input stream of methanol was
also added and a quote was provided by ICIS. All pieces of equipment were added
as well according to information provided in Appendix B-7 of Analysis, Synthesis,
and Design of Chemical Process 4th edition, Turton.

Cash Flow Diagram

35.0
30.0
25.0
20.0
15.0
Project Value (millions of dollars)

10.0
5.0
0.0
-5.0
-10.0
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Project Life (Years)

Figure 1 CFD produced by CapCost

The annual utility sum is displayed in figure 2. Figure 2 shows that the vast
majority of the costs come from medium pressure steam. The high pressure steam
is only used in the second heat exchanger so it is almost invisible in figure 2. The
second most annual utility comes from the cooling water.

Annual Utility Cost

Medium Pressure Steam

High Pressure Steam

Cooling Water

Figure 2 Costs from utilities

Bare module cost of equipment is displayed in figure 3. Rotaries are the most
expensive and coming in second place is the exchangers then the towers then the
pumps and then the silver from the reactor. The silver from the reactor which is a
gauze sheet was estimated to be $50,000 based on the current market price of
silver and the surface area of that reactor. The medium pressure steam has an
annual utility cost of $5,923,500. The high utility cost of the MPS is because a lot of
the heat exchangers in the process use MPS. If the MOC of the heat exchangers
were made of stainless steel or some other material to have more efficient heat
transfer than the price of the MPS would decrease but the MOC of the heat
exchangers would approximately double. Depending on the life expectancy of the
process a larger initial investment in the MOC of the heat exchangers might be
worth considering.

Bare Module Cost of Equipment

Rotary

Exchangers

Towers

Silver Reactor

Pumps

Figure 3 CBM of Equipment

Since the rotaries are such a large cost, about 1.7 million. A way to reduce
this cost would be to not buy a spare initially for the second compressor. This would
trim of $500,000 which a spare could be bought after breaking even. Also the most
expensive exchanger which is the kettle reboiler (E-804), is $363,000 is made
completely of stainless steel, if the MOC were carbon steel instead, the new price
would be $194,000. The third largest cost is coming from the towers which is
because one of the towers has a bare module cost of $1,000,000. The million dollar
tower is made of stainless steel so if the MOC were carbon steel the price would go
down to $650,000. Other ways to increase profit might be to try to recycle the
methanol waste stream which is considered hazardous waste by the US
government. This would require adding an additional pump to pump the methanol
back to the beginning of the cycle, an example would be a pump that is centrifugal,
carbon steel, 4 kW of shaft power and a discharge pressure of 5bar would have a
bare module cost of $17,000. This seems like a decent option to try to recycle
because the annual cost of the hazardous methanol waste is $750,000. As stated

earlier though, the breakeven takes 2 years due to the high rate of return, so not
many modifications should have to be made from its current state.