Upscale Design, Process Development, and Economic Analysis of Industrial Plants for Nanomagnetic Particle Production for Environmental and Biomedical Use

Very few economical and process engineering studies have been made concerning the scale-up and implementation of nanomagnetic particle manufacturing into a full-scale plant, and determination of its viability. In this work we describe such a study for two types of industrial plants, one for manufacturing magnetic particles for applications in the environmental area, and the other for manufacturing nanomagnetic particles for applications in the biotechnology area; the two different applications are compared. The following methodology was followed: establish the manufacturing process for each application; determine the market demand of the product (magnetic nanoparticles) for both applications; determine the production capacity of each plant; engineer all the manufacturing process, determining all the process units and performing all the mass and energy balances for both plants; scale-up the main equipment; and determine the global economic impact and profitability. At the end both plants are found to be technologically and economically viable, the characteristics of the final products being, however, quite different, as well as the process engineering, economic analysis, and scale-up.


25
The total income, due to selling the magnetic particles will be:

33
To determine the first estimate of the costs, we will use the following formula [S1]:

39
In the defined process the raw materials will be FeSO4·7H2O, NH4OH and H2O.

40
For water we will use 31,909.68 m 3 /year which supposes a cost 97.74 €/m 3 (includes price of 41 purification stage), thus the total cost will be 3,118,716 €/year.

42
In the case of FeSO4·7H2O, this will be supplied at the price of 4,823.41 €/tonne, and as 289,62

43
tonnes/year are required, the total cost will be 1,396,950 €/year.

44
The requirements on NH4OH are 24,030.79 tonnes/year at the price of 199.20 €/tonne, therefore 45 the associated cost will be 4,787,016 €/year.

48
In this case the raw materials will be FeCl2·4H2O, CH3COONa, starch and H2O.

49
For water we will use 728,623 liters/year, assuming a cost of about 12.10 €/L (includes price of 50 purification stage-much more demanding than in EA), thus the total cost will be 8, 816

57
On the other end, we also produce as sub-product acetic acid. The selling price of this reagent is 58 47 €/kg. As we will produce 32,665.47 kg/year of this subproduct, the total profit on selling acetic acid 59 will be 1,535,277.09 €/year. For practical reasons, we will consider this income in this section, which 60 implies that we decrease this amount in the total raw materials cost.

63
In general services we consider costs such as electricity, steam, compressed air, etc. This cost 64 usually is calculated as 10-20% of the total costs. We have assumed 20% (MS = 0.2 C) for both plants.

66
The required manpower will be at this stage evaluated by the Andres method [S1]: where Hh is the manpower per hour required, Tm is total production (tonne/year), op the number of 69 process sections of the plant, and q the maximum capacity of the plant (tonne/day).

71
The plant will work continuously during the year, 24 hr per day and 7 days per week, 11 months 72 per year. It will have 3 shifts of work, 5 days per week, the total number of process sectors 4.

101
In this case, IA is equal to 77,319,588 €.

104
The costs associated with the preliminary studies, as we are dealing with an industry of new 105 products and high-production rate, is estimated as being 12% of the total immobilized (IB = 0.12 I).

107
The costs associated with the preliminary studies, as we are dealing with an industry of 108 improved products and low-production rate, is estimated as being 35% of the total immobilized (IB = 109 0.35 I).

111
This is a value that also depends on the immobilized, and the fixed active costs. For both cases 112 it will correspond to 8% of the total immobilized capital (IC = 0.08 I).

131
As previously pointed out, the plants will be working continuously or semi-continuously and 132 therefore shifts must be applied in several of the work positions, which implies an extra payment to 133 workers, when working by night.

134
In Tables S3 and S4 are presented the labor costs for the direct human labor.

144
Applications, they are easier to compute and are presented in Table S7. For Biotechnological

145
Applications we are able to estimate this cost to be 20% of the total production costs, which makes a 146 total of 9,048,525 €/year (BA).

217
The Invested Capital is the sum of two parts: the immobilized and the working capital 218

219
This is the amount of invested money that will not be recovered, and is calculated as the sum of

238
The cost for the thermal isolation will be considered to be 4% of the total equipment costs in the

273
Fixed Immobilized Capital

274
In tables S12 and S13 we present a sum-up of all the parts of the calculated total Fixed 275 Immobilized Capital for the two types of Plants.

280
This is the part of the Capital that may be recovered.

282
To compute this cost we may apply 283 ′ 1 * ( 12 ) where M'1 is the cost of raw materials by unit of product and q the annual production quantity. This