Please can anybody explain what the chemical engineering cost index is and what is used for?
Does it give an estimation of the plants cost in the future?
Can I guess that the cost of the petrochemical plants is increasing and will be high at the future?
The method of estimation of The Chemical Eng. Plant Cost Index,and others, can not predict the cost in the future, but it can do it for the last year.
After you apply it ,you will have an idea of how the prices could be at the present time.
Economical engineering and Che.Eng. Plant design, were the name of one of the courses, related to this matter that I had studied at the University.
The best book: Peters and Timmerhaus, "Plant Design and Economics for Chemical Engineers", 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, 1991.
I think you should review your old notebooks and remind.
Hi Monagas
Can I understand from the plot excel file in the site you posted it that the prices have been increased since year 1970?
Is this also applicable for ethylene plant? Does it relate to the products prices?
CEPCI is mainly used to make estimates of the capital cost of building a process plant today, based on the cost of a similar plant some years ago. Used with an exponent (e.g. n=0.7) to adjust for plant capacity, the CEPCI provides a quick estimate of current plant costs. It has nothing to do with product prices.
Thank u owg for the delivering the right understanding of the CEPCI, but has the CEPCI considered the market prices since the current prices have not ever reached?
If so, then how accurate the estimation would be for estimating a CAPX of a new plant currently or in the near future?
The monthly CEPCI is typically about 3 months behind the current costs of the resources like steel, eng labor, etc that go into a process plant. Since a plant usually takes 1-5 years from concept to on-line and may have a life of 10-20 years, these few months do not usually cause a problem.