In the light of market uncertainties and globalization, the capacity of fast and flexible adaption of a chemical plant to changing market conditions becomes a major necessity in future production scenarios. The capacity flexibility of a plant can be influenced by oversizing and numbering up of unit operations. The addi- tional costs for these measures have to be compensated for by the financial benefit arising from the option to adapt to uncertain market demands. Therefore, the ad- ditional costs have to be balanced against the gain in flexibility. In this work, methods for the evaluation of capacity flexibility are adapted from the manufac- turing industries to enable a cost-effective design of a modular plant. The evalua- tion methods are used to select modular plant setups allowing the best compro- mise between costs and flexibility in different market scenarios. Keywords: Capacity, Expansion, Flexibility, Modularization, Plant design Received: September 16, 2013; revised: November 20, 2013; accepted: November 26, 2013 DOI: 10.1002/ceat.201300635 1 Introduction In the future, it can be expected that market fluctuations caused by economic crises or changing customer needs will influence the chemical and biochemical industries more than ever. Due to the strong globalization and the dependences on multiple industrial sectors, the economic cycles of the chemical industries will become more unpredictable. The economic cri- sis in 2009 showed the impact of a global economic downturn on the chemical industry. To be successful in such an economic environment, a company must be able to react very fast to eco- nomic downturns and upswings. In contrast to this requirement, chemical plants are in most cases designed for a specific production capacity. The corre- sponding processes are optimized with regard to investment and operating costs for this specific capacity. Furthermore, the development time for such a plant is quite long. In case that this capacity fits well to the market development, this is the most cost-efficient way to design a plant. If the market forecast does not fit to the expected demand development, the invest- ment and operating costs for an adjustment of the plant out- put are often very high [1]. To avoid this, a different strategy for plant design is needed. In this strategy, optimization of the plant toward a specific design capacity is no longer the main aspect. The target is to design a plant that can be operated cost-effectively in different demand scenarios. This characteris- tic of a plant is called capacity flexibility. In general, flexibility is the ability to change a state with low expenditures of time, effort, costs, and performance [2]. Capacity flexibility is the ability to adapt the production out- put to changing market demands [3]. In the light of uncertain market developments, capacity flexibility is the key to a suc- cessful adaption to the uncertain demand. To fulfill the requirements for a cost-effective and fast adaption of the plant output, a change in equipment design and selection is needed. One of the most promising approaches to reduce engineering time and costs is modularization. In such an approach, appa- ratuses with fixed sizes are used instead of dedicated equip- ment. The applicability and benefit of such a concept have already been demonstrated in the F 3 Factory project [4]. Besides the development of a module database, it is necessary to find ways to combine the modules into a process. The com- plexity of such a design task depends on the number of unit operations and the available module sizes. There are two major design issues for a modular plant. First, the operability of the selected modules within the process boundaries must be ensured. Second, the different module combinations must be compared to select the most economic one. In light of the changing economic environment, this comparison must be based on an analysis of capacity flexibility. In such an analysis, the size and parallel number of modules of each unit operation is one of the most decisive points. This process information has to be combined with market information and economic evaluation. To allow for such an approach, it is necessary to quantify the capacity flexibility. Capacity flexibility can be divided into two subgroups, namely volume flexibility and expansion flexibility [3]. Which type of flexibility is needed depends on the expected market scenarios. In the following, these two types and their quantifi- cation will be described in more detail. www.cet-journal.com 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 Tim Seifert Anna-Katharina Lesniak Stefan Sievers Gerhard Schembecker Christian Bramsiepe Technical University Dortmund, Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering, Laboratory of Plant and Process Design, Dortmund, Germany.
Correspondence: Prof. Gerhard Schembecker (gerhard.schembecker
@bci.tu-dortmund.de), Technical University Dortmund, Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering, Laboratory of Plant and Process Design, Emil-Figge-Str. 70, 44227 Dortmund, Germany. 332 G. Schembecker et al. A plant with high volume flexibility allows the adaption of the plant capacity to market changes without changing the setup, e.g., by adding additional units [5]. Thus, the operating window of the plant set by the minimal and the maximal rea- lizable capacity is a measure of volume flexibility. To allow a comparison between different designs, Gerwin [5], Cheng et al. [6] and Parker and Wirth [7] developed methods to evalu- ate the volume flexibility of manufacturing systems. In chem- ical engineering, volume flexibility can be related to opera- tional flexibility. This type of flexibility describes a parameter range under which a plant can be operated by maintaining specifications like product purity [8, 9]. In this context, Grossman et al. [10] developed a measure for the feasible operating range of a plant for a set of uncertain process parameters like kinetics or heat transfer coefficients. Based on this idea, multiple variations of algorithms have been used to optimize operational flexibility [1113]. Lima et al. [14] investigated the application of operational flexibility analysis for a wide range of example problems for steady-state and dynamic systems. Malcolm et al. [15] showed the value of combining process design and design of plant control to opti- mize the operational flexibility of a plant. These publications allow designing a process that covers a wide uncertainty range of different process parameters under optimal costs. The methods can also be used to optimize the operability of the plant at different capacities. Due to the high complexity of the methods, the implementation effort for larger process design is very high. Expansion flexibility describes the opportunity to adapt the production output if the market demand increases durably [3]. In contrast to volume flexibility, additional apparatuses or production lines are installed to follow the market demand. In the field of goods manufacturing industries, evaluation meth- ods for expansion flexibility have already been developed [16, 17]. In the chemical engineering literature, the focus lies on optimization of expansion strategies based on expected market development and investment costs. The effects of the operability of the plant at different capacities are often of sub- ordinate importance. Oldenburg et al. [18] and Wiesner et al. [19] elaborate on the advantage of installing multiple smaller plants compared to a single plant built for design capacity. Coleman and York [20] set up a model for optimizing investment strategies in uncertain markets. Lier and coworkers showed the benefit of stepwise plant expansion using discounted cash flow (DCF) calculations [21] and a real-option analysis approach [22]. These methods can be used to find an optimal investment strategy for adapting to an increasing market with multiple but identical production lines. The drawback is that economies of scale limit the adaptability as the investment costs for multiple smaller plants are much higher compared to one large-scale plant. Thus, the finan- cial benefit from stepwise expansion is limited by the high additional costs, and high capacity flex- ibility cannot be achieved. Here, the modular approach offers additional options to overcome this limitation. Therefore, each unit operation has to be taken into account separately. This is neces- sary as each unit operation has its own operating range and impact on the costs structure. Considering these two points allows a better control of the size and cost of each expansion step. The aim of this work is to present a method capable of iden- tifying the best compromise between capacity flexibility and investment costs in a modular plant design. This method should be applied in the early stages of process design when the decision for or against a modular plant has to be made. Therefore, methods allowing a quick estimation of the capacity flexibility with low computational effort are needed. The eval- uation methods are adapted from strategies in the manufactur- ing industries. These evaluation methods will be used in a case study of the continuous production of a recombinant protein. Lastly, it will be shown which method can be applied in differ- ent market scenarios. 2 Case Study Here, the model process, i.e., a plant for the production of a recombinant protein, and different market scenarios for the following evaluation will be described. A detailed process description, the required simulation work, and the assump- tions made can be found in [23]. In the following, only funda- mental information will be presented. 2.1 Example Process The flow chart of the process can be seen in Fig. 1. The protein is produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae (bakers yeast) with a capacity of 10 t a 1 in continuous fermentation (FER). To reach the desired cell concentration, the continuous fermentation process is usually started in batch mode, followed by a period of fed-batch operation. A further continuous mode is started until the process has to be aborted to avoid gene mutation. The operating costs of continuous fermentation consist of the costs for coolant and electric power, oxygen, water, substrate, and cells. Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.cet-journal.com Figure 1. Flow sheet of the model process. Plant design 333 As the product is produced extracellularly, the next step is to separate the cells, applying micro- filtration (MF1) and diafiltration (DF). In the following ultrafiltra- tion unit (UF1), water is removed to reduce the volume of the prod- uct stream for the subsequent operations. In all cases of mem- brane filtration, costs for mainte- nance, membrane replacement, cleaning, and energy con- sumption are included. Usually, these costs are proportional to the membrane area [24]. Additionally, the costs for diafiltration water and wastewater have to be taken into account. These costs can be directly derived from the mass balance. The membrane areas were calculated using the flux of the membrane and the retention of each component. Either a fixed concentration of a component in the retentate or a specific volume reduction of the feed stream was chosen as target value. Next, other impurities like cell debris and non-product pro- teins are removed in a two-stage aqueous two-phase extraction (ATPE). In the ATPE, polyethylene glycol (PEG) and a phos- phate salt are used. Here, the consumption of PEG and the phosphate salt dominate the operating costs. Additionally, the operating costs include expenses for electricity and wastewater. The extraction is described with the help of partitioning coeffi- cients for each component and a phase composition of the ATPE system. Finally, the volume of the product stream is again reduced in an ultrafiltration unit before the product can be transferred to a finishing plant. Investment costs have been calculated using a capacity-based method. In Eq. (1), C Ref 1) are the reference costs, S Ref is the ref- erence size, and n is the degression exponent of a unit opera- tion. S is the calculated size of the apparatus. The parameters for the cost functions can be found in Tab. 1. The resulting costs estimated are the bare equipment costs (BEC) and have to be multiplied with a Lang factor of 6.5 [26] to get the total capital investment. BEC C Ref S S Ref
n (1) The sizes and BEC of the unit operations are listed in Tab. 2, optimized for a plant with a design capacity of 10 t a 1 . The cost structures of the investment and the operating costs are shown in Fig. 2. The investment costs of $ 5.6 million are dominated by the costs for the fermenter and ultrafiltration UF1. The total operating costs are $ 3.2 million a 1 . The fer- menter causes nearly 50 % of the operating costs due to the costs for raw materials like cells and substrate, while especially the PEG costs cause the high impact of the extraction step. The operating costs for the first ultrafiltration UF1 and for the diafiltration DF are dominated by the wastewater costs. MF1 does not lead to wastewater costs. Thus, only membrane replacement and energy costs have to be taken into considera- tion. In the following, a product price of $ 3000 kg 1 is assumed. 2.2 Scenarios The most suitable type and degree of capacity flexibility can only be determined, given the expected market development. Based on this, the volume flexibility has to be determined for a given setup of apparatuses. In the next step, the volume flex- ibility can be optimized in order to cover a range of fluctua- tions around the expected market demand. In the scenario for the investigation of volume flexibility, we assumed an expected capacity of 10 t a 1 . In cases with growing markets, the expansion flexibility is used to investigate the adaptability to increasing demands. To show the impact of different market demands on the plant design, two different scenarios will be investigated. These two scenarios (S1, S2) will be compared with a base case (BC) with a final design capacity of 10 t a 1 . The market developments of S1, S2, and BC are shown in Fig. 3. The final capacity in S1 is 15 t a 1 , and 20 t a 1 are reached in S2 as final capacity. The modularity of the plants is taken into account by using fixed apparatus sizes for the different unit operations. These apparatus sizes are combined to setups. In the following, three different setup alternatives will be compared concerning their volume and expansion flexibility. The apparatus sizes and numbers of apparatuses used as well as the investment costs of the setups are shown in Tab. 3. All setups achieve the design capacity of the base case and are the basis for all following investigations. In setup 1, larger modules are used compared to the other setups. Thus, the number of parallel units needed to achieve design capacity is low. Furthermore, overdesign in set- ups 2 and 3 is higher than in setup 1. Based on the module combination, it can be assumed that setups 2 and 3 will pro- vide higher volume flexibility. The aim of the evaluation meth- www.cet-journal.com 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 Table 1. Input parameters for investment cost calculation [23, 25]. Unit operation Cost-determining size Reference size Reference price [$] Degression exponent Fermenter volume 10 m 3 326,700 0.51 Membrane (UF, DF, MF) membrane area 50 m 2 78,750 0.92 Mixer-settler flow rate 36 m 3 h 1 71,820 0.22 Table 2. Apparatus sizes and BEC for a plant with a capacity of 10,000 kg a 1 . Unit operation Optimal size BEC $ Fermentation (FER) 26.16 m 3 534,000 Microfiltration (MF) 13.1 m 2 23,000 Diafiltration (DF) 4.0 m 2 8,000 Ultrafiltration 1 (UF1) 140.5 m 2 204,000 Ultrafiltration 2 (UF2) 31.8 m 2 52,000 Extraction (EX) 48,000 Stage 1 0.26 m 3 h 1 Stage 2 0.29 m 3 h 1
1) List of symbols at the end of the paper.
334 G. Schembecker et al. ods, which will be presented in the next section, must be to investigate the tradeoff between the achieved flexibility and the resulting increase in investment costs. 3 Flexibility Analysis In this section, different methods for the evaluation of volume and expansion flexibility will be described. The expected demand uncertainty can be derived, e.g., from historical data for established products or can be based on a Monte-Carlo simulation if not enough data is available [19]. 3.1 Volume Flexibility Volume flexibility is determined by the lowest and highest pro- duction output that can be achieved with a given plant setup. Thus, the basis for the evaluation of volume flex- ibility must be an investigation of the operating window of each unit operation. Cheng et al. [6] described such an evaluation of operating windows for flanged shafts. In their example, volume flexibility depends on the num- ber of shafts that can be produced in a certain time. The production time in one process step for one shaft depends on the time needed to achieve the final diameter of the shaft on a turning lathe. Furthermore, it has to be ensured that the follow- ing machines can handle the variety in shaft diam- eters and have a capacity matching with the other machines in the manufacturing process. These two characteristics set the feasible capacity range [6]. This idea can be transferred to the field of chem- ical engineering. However, the number of pro- duced pieces has to be translated into a production output in mass per time as the measure for the feasible capacity range. This capacity range is limited by apparatus design and process requirements. To keep an operating point inside these bound- aries, the process parameters have to be adapted. The individu- al operating windows of each apparatus can be combined to get the operating envelope of the overall plant as it was pre- sented by Cheng et al. [6]. This operating envelope is set by the unit operation with the lowest maximum and the highest minimum capacities. The wideness and the values of the bounds of the operating envelope depend on the selected ap- paratus type and the size and number of the parallel appara- tuses of each unit operation in the process. Thus, the module combination is the lever to influence volume flexibility. Fig. 4 shows an example for the determination of an operating enve- lope from operating windows. To set the change in volume flex- ibility in relationship to the neces- sary expansion, a mathematical description for volume flexibility is needed. In this way, a tradeoff between the costs for changes in plant design by numbering up and Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.cet-journal.com Figure 2. Operating cost structure (left diagram) and investment cost structure (right diagram) optimized for a capacity of 10 t a 1 . Figure 3. Market development for the investigated scenarios. Table 3. Setups used for the flexibility evaluation. Setup FER [m 3 ] MF [m 2 ] DF [m 2 ] UF1 [m 2 ] UF2 [m 2 ] EX [m 3 h 1 ] Investment costs $ 1 1 40 1 20 1 5 8 20 2 20 2 0.36 7.1 million 2 2 25 2 10 6 1 10 20 5 10 4 0.36 10.3 million 3 3 15 2 10 6 1 10 20 5 10 4 0.36 11.4 million Figure 4. Schematic diagram for the determination of an operat- ing envelope. Plant design 335 oversizing and the impact on volume flexibility can be identi- fied. To quantify the volume flexibility VF, a method developed by Parker and Wirth [7] has been adapted. In this method, the volume flexibility VF (Eq. (2)) is described by the difference between the upper and the lower bound of the operating enve- lope (C max C min ) divided by the upper bound. Production lines with fixed production output have a value of 0. Systems with very high volume flexibility have a value near 1. VF C max C min C max ; if C min < C BreakEven then C min C BreakEven (2) If the lower capacity bound C min is below breakeven capaci- ty, C BreakEven has to be set as new lower limit of the operating envelope. The breakeven capacity is the capacity where the revenues equal the production costs. Below this capacity, the revenues are no longer high enough to cover the expenditures [27]. Consequently, the option to operate a plant below break- even capacity does not bring any additional benefit. To calculate the breakeven capacity, the net sales and the variable and fixed costs have to be determined. It is obvious that the variable costs will increase if the production output increases [27]. In most cases, the relationship between variable costs and output is nearly linear. This is particularly the case if the variable costs are dominated by raw material costs. In case of the example process, the variable costs are made up of production costs, transportation costs (9.5 % of the sales), and license fees (2 % of the sales). Fixed costs are calcu- lated in dependence on the plant investment costs. They include depreciation (10 % of the total capital investment (TCI)), site-related costs (2 % of TCI), maintenance (4 % of TCI), insurance (1.5 % of TCI), and personnel costs. Further- more, sales costs (2.5 % of the sales), administrative expenses (2.5 % of the sales), and research expenses (2.5 % of the sales) are accounted to the fixed costs [26]. Using the evaluation of VF with the given equation, setups with a low C min are rated higher than setups with a high C max . To pay attention to VF at higher capacities, C min should be replaced by a fixed minimum capacity. This C min could be, e.g., a capacity that was estimated for the market entry of a new product or a minimum expected capacity derived from historical market data. 3.2 Expansion Flexibility Evaluation of the expansion flexibility EF can be used to iden- tify the plant design that allows the most cost-efficient and flexible adaption to a long-term market development. In the following, two evaluation methods for EF will be adapted from methods used in the manufacturing industry. The first method was developed by Rogalski [17] who pro- poses a capacity-based method to rate EF Rogalski comparable to the factor for volume flexibility described above (Eq. (2)). Rogalski describes the value for EF Rogalski as the difference between the target capacity C target and the new breakeven capacity C BreakEven,new divided by the difference between the maximum capacity before expansion C max,old and the corre- sponding breakeven capacity C breakEven,old (Eq. (3)). If the technical minimum capacity C min is higher than the breakeven capacity, C BreakEven is replaced by C min . EF Rogalski
C target C BreakEven;new C max;old C BreakEven;old ; if C min > C BreakEven then C BreakEven C min (3) A high EF Rogalski is generated if the difference between the target capacity and the maximum capacity before expansion is high and the change in breakeven capacity is small. The change in breakeven capacity is caused by the costs for the additional apparatuses as the fixed costs increase, e.g., by an increase in depreciation or higher personnel costs. This fact is described in Fig. 5 showing an exemplary breakeven diagram. If the new capacity range (C target C breakEven,new ) is larger than the old capacity range (C max,old C BreakEven,old ), the volume flexibility is improved by the expansion. Such systems have an EF Rogalski above 1. A value of EF Rogalski below 1 indicates that the volume flexibility is reduced by the expansion step. Such a develop- ment should be avoided. The expansion flexibility according to Jacob [16] is used to evaluate the long-run profit of an expandable system. This method should be applied if the market demand is expected to increase constantly and if the final capacity is not uncertain. A system with high expansion flexibility approximates the eco- nomic value achievable with an ideally adapted plant. The idea of Jacob [16] was adapted by Sethi and Sethi [3], resulting in Eq. (4), which describes the expansion flexibility EF Jacob of a system using the annual profit as the comparison criterion. EF Jacob
PE PN PI PN (4) www.cet-journal.com 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 Figure 5. Breakeven diagram describing the change in the flex- ibility range according to Rogalski [17]. 336 G. Schembecker et al. In this equation, the different profits P achievable with an expanded system E, a not expanded system N, and an ideal sys- tem I are compared. The ideal system offers an optimal pro- duction capacity at each point in the time horizon. The not expanded system describes the achievable profit if the system is not expanded. The resulting EF Jacob has a value between 1 for total flexibility and 0 for no expansion flexibility. As the basic idea of this method is to evaluate manufactur- ing systems, an adaption to chemical engineering design is needed. Market development is taken into account by applying DCF calculations, giving the profit of I, N, and E at the end of the time horizon. In DCF calculations, cash flows depending on the actual market demand of each year are estimated. These cash flows are discounted to todays value. The sum of all cash flows results in the net present value (NPV), which is used as value for the profit. Plant expansions are included as a new investment into DCF calculations. The decision variable setting the time for expansion depends on the business case. In cases with a lead strategy, additional capacities would be installed before the maximum capacity of the plant is reached. In lag strategies, one would wait until the upper limit of the operat- ing envelope is reached. The ideal system I is represented by a plant designed for the final capacity in each of the two scenarios so that economies of scale are fully used. Such an ideal system would be built if the increase in market demand was foreseen during the planning period. The expanded plant E is a plant that was previously designed for design capacity of the base case but is expanded to reach the new final demand. The not expanded system N has the same design as E but without expansion. The resulting DCF curves for the three plants I, N, and E are shown exem- plarily in Fig. 6. As operating time and investment costs vary for the systems, the NPV cannot be compared directly. To allow for a compari- son, the equivalent annual annuity (EAA) is used, transform- ing the NPV into an annual annuity. Eq. (5) shows how the EAA is calculated. r is the discount rate and t is the project life- time, which is the time span after production start. EAA rNPV 1 1 r t (5) Eq. (6) is the resulting equation for calculation of EF Jacob using EAA. EF Jacob
EAAE EAAN EAAI EAAN (6) As the future market development will differ from the fore- casts made during plant design, it is necessary to take different scenarios into account. These scenarios represent different pos- sible market developments. EF is calculated for different setups in each of the scenarios. By this, it is possible to evaluate which of the setups achieves the highest EF in most of the market sce- narios. Furthermore, it is possible to take market decreases into account. In this way, also a stop of the expansion plan can be respected and evaluated. 4 Results In this part, the presented methods are used to investigate the volume and expansion flexibilities of the plant setups given in Tab. 3, in the scenarios described in Sect. 2.2. The aim is to identify the setups giving the best compromise between costs and flexibility under the given boundary conditions. 4.1 Evaluation of Volume Flexibility Before volume flexibility and costs can be set into relation, an evaluation of the operating windows of each unit operation is needed to set the boundaries of the operating envelope. To avoid an increase in operating costs, operating conditions like volume reduction by the membranes or extraction yields are kept in their optimum range. Thus, it is necessary to identify operating parameters that allow for a control of the operating conditions. The range in which the operating parameters can be adapted depends on the design of the apparatus. In the fol- lowing, the limiting operating parameters of the example pro- cess and their range will be described first. After that, the vol- ume flexibility will be calculated and compared for the three setups presented in Tab. 3. In case of the fermentation, the residence time must be kept constant in order to keep up the optimal product yield. To rea- lize higher or lower capacities with a fixed fermenter size, the filling level can be adapted. The optimal filling level is 70 % of the total fermenter volume. The highest filling level that can be realized is 85 % of the total fermenter volume. Above this val- ue, foam formation caused by gassing and cell debris cannot be handled anymore. Below a certain filling level, an optimal mixing is no longer guaranteed. This lower level depends on the design of the fermenter. In this case, we assume a mini- mum filling level of 50 %. In case of ultrafiltrations UF1 and UF2, a minimum volume reduction is required to keep the size of the following unit operations at an acceptable value. The concentrations of prod- uct in the retentates of MF1 and DF1 have a high influence on the product recovery, which would increase the operating costs. With the help of the transmembrane pressure, membranes can be controlled under different loads [24]. It was assumed that the optimumoperation of the membrane modules is achieved at 90 % of the maximum achievable flux to keep 10 % of spare ca- pacity. The minimumflux is set to 50 %of the maximumflux. Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.cet-journal.com Figure 6. Schematic diagram of calculated NPV for the expanded systemE, the not expanded systemN, and the ideal systemI. Plant design 337 The two-stage ATPE is carried out in two hori- zontal mixer-settler units. For total phase separa- tion a certain settling time is needed. To ensure this settling time, it must be guaranteed that the settling velocity of the dispersed droplets is lower than the velocity of the continuous phase [28]. The needed settling time is provided by the design of the settler by adapting the length, diameter, and position of the interphase. As the velocity of the continuous phase depends on the volume flow of the feed stream, the residence time must be higher at higher loads. As the settler design limits the sett- ling time, overdesign and numbering up must be used to operate the settler at higher loads as well. The capacity of the mixer is limited by a minimum residence time that has to be achieved for good mixing [28]. In case of apparatuses operated in parallel, it is possible to temporarily shut down some of the units. This opportunity has to be taken into account to estimate the lower bound of the operating window. Fig. 7 shows the achievable capacity limits for continuous fermenters operated in parallel, with dif- ferent sizes and numbers of parallel units. To keep the resi- dence time constant, the filling level can be adapted in the range between 50 and 85 % of the total volume. Compared to one 40-m 3 fermenter, it is possible to reduce the lower reaction volume from 20 to 4 m 3 if five 8-m 3 fermenters are used. Using two 25-m 3 fermenters enables an increase of the maximal reac- tion volume to 42.5 m 3 . From this example, it can be seen that the apparatus size and numbering up are the degrees of free- dom to influence the volume flexibility. Fig. 8 shows the resulting operating envelopes for each setup presented in Tab. 3. The three radar charts show the differences between the operating window of a unit and the operating envelope of the whole setup. The axes of the diagram represent the percentage of design capacity. 100 % is equal to the design capacity of 10 t a 1 . With the help of these diagrams, it is possi- ble to identify capacity bottlenecks. The fermenter has a relatively low digression exponent of 0.51 (see Tab. 1) and the highest share in investment costs (see Fig. 2). This means that the use of larger fermenter modules leads to lower investment costs. Thus, the difference in invest- ment costs between setup 1 and the other setups is mainly gen- erated by economies of scale with regard to the fermenter. However, using only one fermenter limits the lower bound of the operating envelope of setup 1 compared to the other set- ups. Furthermore, oversizing in setup 1 is low so that the upper bound of the operating envelope is also smaller compared to the other setups. Setup 3 has the widest operating envelope, but at the same time the highest investment costs of the setups investigated. For the example process, the breakeven capacity is approxi- mately 4.6 t a 1 for setup 1 and 5.0 t a 1 for setups 2 and 3. Thus, the operating envelopes of setup 2 (C min = 4.8 t a 1 ) and setup 3 (C min = 3.8 t a 1 ) are limited by their breakeven capacity. Set- up 1 has a minimum capacity C min of 7.7 kt a 1 . Consequently, the volume flexibility generated by numbering up cannot be fully used and additional investment for higher flexibility does not totally pay off. Setup 1 has a VF of 0.4, which is the lowest of all setups. With an additional investment of $ 3 million for setup 2, a VF of 0.68 can be achieved, which is a significant increase of the operating envelope. Setup 3 has a VF of 0.65, which is lower than the one of setup 2. The reason for this is the limitation of the lower bound of the operating envelope by the breakeven capacity. Therefore, designs with a C min below the breakeven point should be avoided to allow for an economic utilization of the installed equipment also at the lower bound of the oper- ating envelope. Based on these results, it is possible to select a setup depen- dent on the uncertainty in market demand. The operating en- velope of the plant must be high enough to cover the range of uncertainty. In cases with a low market uncertainty, setup 1 should be preferred as its investment costs are the lowest of all setups. If high uncertainties in market demand are expected, setup 2 should be selected as it provides a compromise between the flexibility and costs of the three setups. Setup 3 has the highest investment costs but the flexibility does not pay off. Thus, this setup should not be used at all. 4.2 Evaluation of Expansion Flexibility The expansion flexibilities of the three setups presented in Tab. 3 were evaluated for two different expansion scenarios www.cet-journal.com 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 Figure 7. Fermenter capacity for different sizes (8, 25, and 8 m 3 ) and the number of parallel units (1, 2, and 5) depending on the filling level. Figure 8. Resulting operating envelope for each alternative. 338 G. Schembecker et al. (see Fig. 3) with the help of the two methods described in Sect. 2. The first scenario is an expan- sion to 15 t a 1 , and the second one to 20 t a 1 . The same apparatus sizes as already used in the setups shall be installed only to achieve the new target capacity. This allows for a short implementation time as the engineering for the units has already been done. Therefore, it is assumed that the Lang factor can be reduced to 4 as the engineering effort is reduced. Tab. 4 shows the additional number of units for each process step needed to reach the capacities of both scenarios. As the operating envelopes of the plants are taken into account, the number of installed equipment items can be reduced. Tab. 5 shows the upper bound of the op- erating window of each unit operation after expan- sion. To apply the method of Rogalski, an investigation of the operating windows and breakeven capacity for each setup in the different scenarios is needed. The expansion steps are referred to the base case scenario with a capacity of 10 t a 1 . Additional investment for the expansion increases the depre- ciation and fixed costs, which results in an increase in the breakeven capacity. The variable costs, on the other hand, are not affected by the expansion in this example. Given the change in the breakeven capacity for the expansion scenarios 1 (S1) and 2 (S2), the changes in the flexibility range compared to the base case (BC) can be calculated. These changes are shown in Fig. 9. In both scenarios, all setups can reach the new target capaci- ty. The lower bound of the flexibility range is moving away from C min due to the change in breakeven capacity. The high- est change can be seen for Setup 3. Furthermore, the change in the lower bound is also the highest as the increase in invest- ment is higher compared to the other setups. Setup 1 is limited in the base case and in scenario 1 by the smallest technically feasible capacity, and not by its breakeven capacity as is the case for setups 2 and 3. Only in case of S2, the C min of setup 1 is smaller than the breakeven capacity. However, this change is relatively small as the additional investment costs for the expansion are comparably low for this setup. The reason for this is the large size of the fermenter, leading to higher economies of scale compared to the other setups. The values for EF that can be derived from the ranges in Fig. 6 are listed in Tab. 6. As setup 2 already fulfills the target capacity in S1, it is not possible to calculate EF Rogalski . Setups 2 and 3 can keep the size of their capacity ranges, leading to val- ues for EF Rogalski of around 1. In case of setup 1, the wideness of the capacity range is increased as EF Rogalski is above 1. In S2, setup 1 achieves a high EF Rogalski of 2.2. This value is also high- er than the value achieved by setup 1 in scenario 1. The reason for this is that the new target capacity in scenario 2 is higher compared to scenario 1, but the difference between the new breakeven capacity and the minimal capacity is small. The results lead to a similar statement as it was found based on the evaluation of volume flexibility. If the flexibility range is limited by the breakeven capacity, additional investment into higher flexibility does not pay off. If the breakeven point is shifted to higher capacities due to an expansion, the difference to the technically feasible capacity is increased. The most effec- tive way to expand a plant and maintain the operating range is to limit the increase in breakeven capacity. Here, the selection of the starting setup has a major impact if modules of the same size are used for the expansion. Consequently, the method of Rogalski is very useful as an additional evaluation besides vol- ume flexibility to identify the most suitable setup. Different possible scenarios with different new target capacities should be compared as shown in the example. To investigate EF according to the idea of Jacob, a DCF calcula- tion is needed. The time horizon is 15 years and the discount rate is 12 % for all cases. Plant operation is started as soon as the market demand reaches the lower bound of the operating window, or rather the breakeven capacity of a setup. At this point in time, the setups for a design capacity of 10 t a 1 shown in Tab. 3 are installed. In the year in which the upper bound of the operating window is reached, the expansion is executed. Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.cet-journal.com Table 4. Installed modules and resulting investment costs for capacity expansion. Setup FER [m 3 ] MF [m 2 ] DF [m 2 ] UF1 [m 2 ] UF2 [m 2 ] EX [m 3 h 1 ] Additional investment [$] Scenario 1: Expansion to 15 t a 1 1 +1 40 0 +1 5 +2 20 +1 20 +2 0.36 3.5 million 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.0 million 3 +1 15 0 0 0 0 0 1.6 million Scenario 2: Expansion to 20 t a 1 1 +1 40 +1 20 +1 5 +5 20 +1 20 +2 0.36 6.4 million 2 +1 25 +1 10 +2 1 +3 20 +1 10 0 4.6 million 3 +2 15 +1 10 +2 1 +3 20 +1 10 0 6.8 million Table 5. Upper bound of the operating envelope after expansion. Setup FER [t a 1 ] MF [t a 1 ] DF [t a 1 ] UF1 [t a 1 ] UF2 [t a 1 ] EX [t a 1 ] Scenario 1: Expansion to 15 t a 1 1 26.0 17.0 27.6 15.9 21.0 20.7 2 16.2 17.0 16.5 15.8 17.4 20.7 3 19.5 17.0 16.5 15.8 17.4 20.7 Scenario 2: Expansion to 20 t a 1 1 26.0 34.0 27.6 20.6 21.0 20.7 2 24.3 25.5 22.0 20.6 21.0 20.7 3 24.3 25.5 22.0 20.6 21.0 20.7 Plant design 339 The results of the EF evaluation can be seen in Tab. 6. The calculated EAA are shown in Tab. 7. In contrast to the EF anal- ysis using the method of Rogalski, setups 2 and 3 have a higher expansion flexibility than setup 1 in both market scenarios. This means that these two setups allow a more precise adap- tion to the market development than setup 1. One reason is that production can be started earlier with setups 2 and 3, due to the lower bound of the operating window compared to set- up 1. The earnings made by this earlier start compensate for the higher investment costs of these setups compared to set- up 1 and lead to a higher NPV. In the evaluation method according to Rogalski, this benefit was considered as only the expansion step itself was investigated. In this case, the lower capacity limit of setups 2 and 3 is a major advantage, and the financial benefits generated until expansion is needed can be fully used. EF of setup 1 is much higher in scenario2 than in scenario1. The reasons for this are the additional investment costs for the expansion that arise from the available module size. In both scenarios, one 40-m 3 fermenter is needed to reach the new design capacities. While in scenario 2 this fermenter size fits well to the new design capacity, in scenario 1 the overdesign of this fermenter is too large, leading to high costs for the expan- sion. Thus, the difference in EAA between E and N of setup 1 in scenario 1 increases by only $ 0.3 milliona 1 . In the case of the other two setups, this increase is in the range of $ 1.3 milliona 1 . Consequently, in scenario 1, most of the additional income is needed to pay for the expansion. In scenario2, the economies in scale of setup 1 are higher as compared to the other setups, due to the larger fermenters. Therefore, parts of the profit gen- erated by the time advantage of setups 2 and 3 are compen- sated for by the lower investment costs of setup 1. This trend will be even more pronounced in scenarios with expansions to even higher capacities. To sum up, the results calculated with the method of Jacob show the interaction between the demand development and the apparatus sizes used. The adapted method allows a com- parison between different market situations and enables the decision for the setup with the highest expansion flexibility with regard to long-run profit. In the given example, setup 2 with the higher numbering up should be preferred in the expansion scenarios up to a doubling of the design capacity. In scenarios with higher final capacities, setup 1 should be pre- ferred as oversizing of the fermenter reduces the additional investment costs required for further capacity increases. 5 Fields of Application All methods described in this article help to evaluate the adaptability of the plant capacity in volatile markets, but the different methods aim at different market situations. These market situations can be described by the factors demand and uncertainty. The possible demand covers the range from a con- stant market with a more or less fixed demand to a strongly growing market. The uncertainty gives the range in which the demand can vary. The classification with exemplary markets is shown on the left-hand side of Fig. 10. The dia- gram on the right side of Fig. 10 shows which of the methods should be used for evaluation. If the market demand is expected to be constant and the uncertainty is low, the volume flexibility should be used to select the most suitable setup. The operating envelope can be adapted as close as possible to the expected range of fluctuation to minimize investment costs. If the market uncer- tainty is higher for a nearly constant market, a combination of VF and EF based on Rogalskis www.cet-journal.com 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 Figure 9. Change in flexibility range due to capacity expansion for scenarios 1 (S1) and 2 (S2) compared to the base case (BC). Table 6. Expansion flexibility for both scenarios. Setup Scenario 1 Scenario 2 EF Rogalski EF Jacob EF Rogalski EF Jacob 1 1.5 0.2 2.2 0.7 2 0.7 1.0 0.8 3 1.1 0.6 1.1 0.7 Table 7. EAA (in $ million a 1 ) for the different scenarios. Setup Scenario 1 Scenario 2 EAA(N) EAA(E) EAA(I) EAA(N) EAA(E) EAA(I) 1 10.4 10.7 12.1 13.3 16.2 17.3 2 10.0 11.5 12.1 12.8 16.4 17.3 3 10.0 11.2 12.1 12.8 16.1 17.3 340 G. Schembecker et al. method should be applied. In this case, the volume flexibility can be used to generate basic setups that meet the lower ex- pected market demand. Based on these setups, EF can be eval- uated using the method of Rogalski in different expansion sce- narios. If the market is expected to grow, a more dynamic calcula- tion based on the method of Jacob is needed. This method allows the evaluation of investment splitting over a defined time horizon. In this way, the best investment strategy for a given setup can be determined. To respect higher uncertainties in an estimated market development, EF according to Jacob can be calculated for different setups in different scenarios. 6 Conclusion and Outlook Three different methods for the evaluation of capacity flexibil- ity of modular plants were presented. The first method allows the investigation of the volume flexibility by analyzing the operating range of each apparatus within the plant. Capacity bottlenecks can be identified and additional costs for increas- ing the volume flexibility can be calculated. This makes the presented method for volume flexibility evaluation very useful for the design of modular plants, e.g., in seasonally volatile markets. The evaluation methods according to Rogalski and Jacob are related to expansion flexibility and help to integrate future expansion scenarios in modular plant design. The meth- od adapted from Rogalski [17] can be applied as an extension for assessment with volume flexibility. The method adapted from Jacob [3, 16] describes the long-term profit of an expan- sion scenario with the help of a DCF calculation and is espe- cially useful in scenarios with strongly growing markets where expansion can generate a significant economic benefit. In future works, the methods presented should be used to optimize plant setups concerning costs and flexibility. In this way, a coupling with the process design phase can be achieved by integrating the flexibility analysis into the process simula- tion. Furthermore, the evaluation of EF according to Rogalski should be further expanded, e.g., by introducing probabilities of occurrence for each market development and weighting the EF of each scenario. In this way, it is possible to find the setup allowing the best adaption for uncertain market demands. Furthermore, criteria for the evaluation of a staged shutdown of a modular plant have to be developed. Therefore, new busi- ness models for modular plants, like the leasing of units, have to be evaluated. Acknowledgment The research leading to the results presented in this paper has received funding from the European Communitys 7th Frame- work Program under grant agreement no. 228867, F 3 Factory. The authors have declared no conflict of interest. Symbols used BEC [$] bare equipment costs C [t a 1 ] capacity C max [t a 1 ] maximal capacity C min [t a 1 ] minimal capacity C Ref [$] reference costs EAA [$ a 1 ] equivalent annual annuity EF Jacob [] expansion flexibility according to Jacob EF Rogalski [] expansion flexibility according to Rogalski n [] degression exponent NPV [$] net present value P [$] profit r [] discount rate S [m 3 , m 2 ] apparatus size Chem. Eng. Technol. 2014, 37, No. 2, 332342 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.cet-journal.com Figure 10. 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