BIOS 1722 - Costs

Costs

General

It was thought that the best picture of the costs would be obtained by presenting the detailed cost data for the most efficient of the atmospheric pressure plants, Essener Steinkohle, and the most efficient medium pressure plant, Hoesch-Benzin. This is done in the next two sections, and before going on to consider them, there are only two general points which should be mentioned.

Firstly, in making a comparison between the atmospheric and the medium pressure processes, Rheinpreussen say that technically and economically there is nothing to chose between the two processes, and in deciding which it would be better to develop the only factor to be considered is what product is desired.

Secondly, Lurgi point out that the whole cost situation can be radically improved if synthesis is combined with the production of town's gas. They did tests at their plant at Bohlen in Which they passed the gas from the pressure gasification plant through a synthesis unit at a high gas rate and used the residual gas as town's gas. As a result, they calculated that the cost of production of town's gas could be reduced from 2.5 to 2.0 Rpfg./cu.m. They are negotiating with the Russian authorities for the construction of such a combination to provide all the town's gas required by the city of Moscow, and this plant would have 120 synthesis reactors and would produce 1,000,000 cu.m. town's gas/year.

Essener Steinkohle

Table 25 shows how the total costs of Essener Steinkohle for the year 1941-2 are divided up among the individual steps in the process and between the various cost items. Tables 26 and 32 show how the cost items for these steps are divided up in much greater detail. They refer to the month of April, 1944.

Hoesch-Benzin

As far as capital costs are concerned, Hoesch stated that the estimates given by Dr. Butefisch of I.G. Farben for Fischer-Tropsch plants were definitely wrong. He estimated RM. 800 900/t. products produced per year, whereas the actual figure for Hoesch-Benzin was RM. 500 /t. even using 1941 figures.

The parent Hoesch company was a steel works and they built the Hoesche-Benzin plant, so that the capital costs were a minimum figure. Thus most of the other firms had to obtain their plant from outside contractors through Mineralbau, so that not only were the actual process higher but there was a percentage ( about RM. 500,000 ) to be paid to Mineralolbau.

As an example of the detailed production costs, the Hoesch figures for January 1942 are given in Tables 35 and 36. The production for this month and the previous month is shown in Table 33, and the cost of the raw materials used as the basis for the production cost calculations are given in Table 34.