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Process economics
Process economics
The cost of a chemical manufacturing plant is usually divided into capital investment and operating costs (Deddis, 2024). Capital investment refers to purchasing and installing equipment (and infrastructure if needed). The operating costs are incurred to maintain the process and consists of material and labour costs. An often-overlooked but significant contributor to process economics is the cost of regulatory compliance.
An interesting case study for process economics is the comparison between standard batch processes and continuous processing (Schaber et al., 2011). The production of nevirapine, the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) in a HIV treatment has been subject to a techno-economic assessment (Diab et al., 2019). After optimising the reaction temperature and other variables such as the crystallisation pH, the process costs and E-factor are consistently lower for the continuous process regardless of scale.
Capital investment (CapEX) and operating costs (OpEX) process costs for nevirapine synthesis (1 tonne /year). Option 1: batch process without solvent recovery. Option 2: continuous process without solvent recovery. Option 3: batch process with 80% solvent recovery. Option 4: continuous process with 80% solvent recovery (Diab et al., 2019).
References
References
Process economics: Deddis, C.R. in Chemical engineering and chemical process technology, eds. Pohorecki, R., Bridgwater, J., Molzahn, M., Gani, R. and Gallegos, C., Encyclopedia of life support systems, volume 4, 311.
Economic analysis of integrated continuous and batch pharmaceutical manufacturing: a case study: Schaber, S.D., Gerogiorgis, D.I., Ramachandran, R., Evans, J.M.B., Barton, P.I. and Trout, B.L., Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2011, 50, 10083-10092.
Process design and optimization for the continuous manufacturing of nevirapine, an active pharmaceutical ingredient for HIV treatment: Diab, S., McQuade, D.T., Gupton, B.F. and Gerogiorgis, D.I., Org. Process Res. Dev. 2019, 23, 3, 320-333.
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