Measure reconstruction of contact devices of distillation column is rather conditionally referred to the1st group. For cost-effectiveness analyses of the measure, the information of Contractor’s staff aboutthe necessity of column stop, in order to provide the cleaning of operated contact devices, is takeninto account. Frequency of such stop is accomplished once in 2… 3 weeks, with cycle time including:

• Duration of performing the column stop;
• Duration of contact devices cleaning;
• Duration of column restart

takes about one day. Consequently, even under the maximum lasting period of between cleaning ofcontact devices, the period of distillation column continuous run decreases from the estimated 330days per year up to 314 days, or by a factor of 5.1%.

Ethanol production decreases by to the same value, namely by 840.4 m3 of dehydrated ethanol; thecost of “unreleased” ethanol as a result of idle time due to contact devices cleaning is 420,180.00 EURper year.

EDV® valve-type trays, widely operated on ethanol plants of Ukraine and Lithuanian distillationcolumns, DO NOT REQUIRE such often stops for cleaning. Regulated operating time of the columnwithout stops makes up 1 YEAR. Consequently, the economic benefit of distillation columnreconstruction will reach not less than 420,180.00 EUR per year. The following features of the columnafter the reconstruction should refer to positive ones:

• High efficiency rate which enables to INCREASE the column capacity by 20 … 25%;
• Lower heat energy consumption for regulated technological process run;
• Lower labour costs for column operation due to excluding rather often cleaning of contactdevices.

Technical and commercial offer for the contact devices delivery in the perspective of distillation columnreconstruction dated from 2014-07-14 is shown in Appendices. All the characteristics of suggestedcontact devices are listed there, including their cost price and operation warranty of engineeringdesign documentation for column reconstruction.

Consequently, the volume of additional investment in reconstruction of distillation column has toinclude nothing but:

• Dismantling costs of existing contact devices;Installation costs of new contact devices;Installation and adjustment supervision costs of distillation column after reconstruction havingbeen done.