WHEN DOES A BIGGER PROCESSING PLANT COST LESS THAN A SMALLER PLANT?

摘要

Many coal operators have assumed that the most efficient use of capital is to build a coal processing plant sized such that it must be operated around the clock to fully utilize the capital assets. However, there may be times when that approach is more costly than building a bigger plant and operating fewer hours. When one considers the additional cost of extra crews, mobile equipment hours and other expenses required to operate a plant 24 hours a day, could it be lower in overall cost to build a bigger plant and reduce operating costs? Various scenarios are considered and evaluated to determine the lower overall cost of bigger versus small processing plant.