Economic decision making for selecting an appropriate by-product upgrading technology

Abstract

Study of economic decision making for selecting an appropriate technology to upgrade the by-products of the Aromatics (Thailand) Public Co., Ltd. (ATC). The analysis will be made in two main methods: a technical analysis and an economic analysis. The objective is to study the decision making to select the appropriate technology from five available technologies which are 1) AROMAX 2) ALPHA 3) RZ-100 4) Z-FORMER and 5) CYCLAR. The result of the study on the potential of the three by-products of ATC, consisting of 1) LPG 2) Light Naphtha and 3) Raffinate, shows that all the ATC by-products have enough quantity and have the quality up to the standard required, to be used as raw materials for reprocessing into main products. On the technical analysis side, emphasis will be given on the possibility of using the five technologies. Once a technology is selected, will it be able to work? from the study, it is found that CYCLAR and AROMAX fail the preliminary selection. Therefore, there remain three technologies which are technically possible to be used. These technologies are ALPHA, RZ-100 and Z-FORMER. Once they have passed the technical analysis, they will be further considered on the economic aspect. For the economic analysis, we divide the study into three economic cases 1) Best Case 2) Normal Case 3) Worst Case. From the three economic supposed cases, it can be concluded that in all the stated economic situations, to convert the ATC by-products into main products, the most appropriate technology is the Z-FORMER which has both the technical and economic suitability, yielding higher return on investment than ALPHA and RZ-100. The Z-FORMER gives an incremental IRR at 26.88% and an incremental NPV at $47,736,474.96 in the best economic situation, 20.18% and $26,601,624.55 in the normal economic situation, 12.06% and $183,061.55 in the worst economic situation