Techno-Economic Analysis of Hydrazine Hydrate Technologies

The increasing demand of current world production for hydrazine hydrate emphasizes the need to focus on the techno-economic analysis of the existing technologies. Three processes, namely the Raschig process, urea process, and peroxide-ketazine process, are chosen for technical analysis followed by cost estimation and economic assessment. The technical part involves the development of flow sheets, process design, carrying out of calculations as well as estimation of raw materials, labor, utilities, and process equipment by sizing and other sub-components. The economic part comprises the estimation of working capital, fixed capital investment, total capital investment, and total production costs. Economic parameters like net profits, rate of return, payback period, and break-even point are also estimated to perform economic analysis. The results obtained from technical analysis and economical feasibility studies show that the peroxide-ketazine-based hydrazine hydrate technology has clear advantages in terms of raw material consumption and economic competitiveness.