Fischer-Tropsch syncrude separation and fractionation

Lower limit in the input guards and the flags.

Unit multiplier in the ASF cumulative fractions, the guards, the train count and the Customized switch.

Converts a fraction to a percentage and caps percentage inputs in the guard.

Converts a percentage (0-100) to a fraction.

Protects the per-tonne divisions against a zero denominator.

Hours in a non-leap year, the basis of the load hours.

Converts kWh/t x t/h (kW) to MW.

Converts the electricity price from EUR/MWh to EUR/kWh.

Converts the yearly heat from MWh to kWh before pricing it per GJ.

1 kWh = 3.6 MJ = 0.0036 GJ; prices the reboiler heat at the steam price per GJ.

Converts the DOE 2006 distillation energy from thousand Btu per barrel to kWh per barrel.

Converts the syncrude feed in t/h to the thousand-lb/h basis of the Kreutz cost row ("Mlb/hr" with M = thousand, as in "MM SCF/hr" for million).

Converts the Kreutz base cost from million USD to USD.

Lower limit of the syncrude feed; a smaller unit is a pilot, not a costed plant.

Upper limit of the syncrude feed: 3 to 4 HC recovery trains, within the 9 trains Kreutz cost for CTL-RC-V.

Lower limit of the ASF growth probability; below it the product is mostly gas and naphtha, not a distillate-and-wax syncrude.

Upper limit of the ASF growth probability.

Reference case 1: atmospheric distillation at the US refinery current average energy (DOE 2006, CAE).

Reference case 2: atmospheric distillation at the DOE 2006 practical minimum energy (PME), a best-practice heat-integrated column.

First carbon number of the stabilised liquid and of the naphtha cut.

First carbon number of the kerosene cut (naphtha is C5-C8).

Last carbon number of the kerosene cut; diesel starts at C17.

Last carbon number of the atmospheric diesel cut; C21+ is the wax bottoms sent to the hydrocracker.

Carbon number of the de Klerk C22+ counter-test.

Alpha of the published counter-test: the model is evaluated at this alpha and compared with the published C22+ share.

Published C22+ share used as an independent counter-test of the ASF closed form.

Water made per t of CH2 units formed (nCO + 2nH2 -> (CH2)n + nH2O); the model corrects it for the paraffin end groups.

Molar mass of a chain CH2 unit.

Mass of the two end hydrogens of an n-paraffin CnH2n+2.

Upper end of the dissolved alcohols in the reaction water (informative output for the water treatment).

Upper end of the dissolved acids in the reaction water.

Fired heat per barrel of feed of an average US atmospheric crude column; read as the reboiler duty of the syncrude column in case 1.

Practical minimum energy per barrel, used as the reboiler heat of case 2 (best practice, heat-integrated column).

Pumps and air coolers of the column, per barrel of feed.

Converts the per-barrel energy of DOE 2006 to a per-tonne basis.

Base cost of the hydrocarbon recovery plant (separators, stabiliser, fractionator), before BOP and indirect costs.

Reference train size of the cost row, in thousand lb/h.

Reference train size in t/h of FT flow to HC recovery, the anchor of the 0.70 scaling law; below it the law is a downward extrapolation (flagged).

Reference size of the 0.70 scaling law expressed in syncrude, the unit of the size slider, at the default ratio. It moves with the ratio slider (6.35 / ratio, 1.26 t/h at 5.05); the output capex_ref_syncrude_t_per_h gives the live value.

Scale exponent of one HC recovery train: the specific CAPEX falls as size^-0.30.

Converts the syncrude feed to the size basis of the Kreutz HC recovery cost row, which is the total FT reactor effluent sent to HC recovery. Without it the cost law is evaluated on a flow 3 to 5 times too small and understates CAPEX.

Lower guard of the FT flow to HC recovery per t of syncrude.

Above 426.2 thousand lb/h (193.3 t/h) of FT flow to HC recovery the plant is split into parallel trains: about 61 t/h of syncrude at the default ratio 3.15.

Cost of n identical trains = cost of one x n^0.9.

Engineering, contingency and other indirects on top of the installed process plant plus BOP.

Cost index of the Kreutz base year.

Cost index of the 2023 currency year of the calculator.

Converts 2023 USD to 2023 EUR.

Lower guard of the specific CAPEX, only against out-of-domain values.

Upper guard of the specific CAPEX, only against out-of-domain values.

Yearly capital charge per EUR of total plant cost, used as the annualisation factor of the standalone separation cost.

Yearly operation and maintenance, labour included, as a share of TPC.

Cut fractions come from the closed-form cumulative W(>=N) = alpha^(N-1) [N(1-alpha) + alpha]. The five cuts telescope and sum to 1, so the hydrocarbon balance closes exactly. Real LTFT syncrude deviates from ASF (methane excess, C2 deficit, olefin re-insertion); the cuts are a screening estimate.

Water per t of hydrocarbons = 1.284 x (14.027 n / (14.027 n + 2.016)), with n = 1/(1-alpha) the number-average carbon number of an n-paraffin product. Exact for a paraffin-only ASF product on a mole basis; an olefin-rich product tends to 1.284. Cobalt (non-shifting) catalyst assumed.

Only the stabilised C5+ liquid is distilled, so the reboiler duty per t of syncrude is the per-t-of-liquid figure times the C5+ fraction. The DOE figure is fired fuel at the crude heater; booking it as reboiler heat at the steam price is conservative by the furnace efficiency. No printed source gives the condenser duty: the model only states that the heat input leaves as low-grade heat (energy balance).

TPC = 0.724 MUSD2007 x (FT flow to HC recovery per train / 6.35 t/h)^0.70 x n^0.9 x CEPCI 797.9/525.4 / 1.0813 USD/EUR x (1 + BOP) x (1 + 32 %), with the FT flow = syncrude x hc_recovery_flow_to_syncrude_ratio (Kreutz size the plant on the raw FT product, not the syncrude). TPC is all-in (installed, BOP, engineering and contingency), so the meta declares battery_limit fully_financed. Owner's costs and interest during construction are carried by the capital charge rate, not by TPC.

Default of the balance-of-plant input.

Default of the capacity factor input; an e-fuel plant fed by variable power with limited H2 storage can run lower.

Defaults of the steam and electricity price inputs. Cooling water (0.35 EUR/GJ in the same table) is not costed because no source gives the condenser duty; at the reboiler duty it would add well under 1 EUR/t.

Lifetime exported to project mode (meta.asset.lifetime_years).

The syncrude feed is not declared as an inlet (no chainable commodity); the wax cut is exported as heavy_ends for the hydrocracker, the C1-C4 as offgas, the kerosene cut as jet_fuel before hydrotreating. Steam heat and electricity are inlets priced by the project, so the meta books no variable opex.

Below 6.35 t/h of FT flow per train, about 2.0 t/h of syncrude at the default ratio 3.15, the 0.70 law is extrapolated downwards; for skid-mounted modular units it likely understates the cost. The flag below_reference_scale_flag says when.