## 3 Results
### Economic Evaluation Analysis  
Considering a plant that handles 15 kg of _S. terebinthifolius_ per batch and an operational time of 8000 h in one year, it was estimated that the total biomass required is 30 tons of biomass from _S. terebinthifolius_. Moreover, based on experimental data and simulation, the total equipment necessary is summarized in Table 6.  
The operation costs are composed of the total costs of cooling water, the CO2 for the supercritical extractor, and the amount of biomass as the raw material for extraction (Table 7). The prices are referenced from supplier's information and a market analysis. The energy required for compression was disregarded due the low cost participation rate in the cost evaluation, since the size of the equipment is small. For one year of operation, the following results were achieved. Regarding the impacts of these two parameters (CAPEX and OPEX), Figure 4 illustrates the cost distribution of the equipment and utilities, where HE is the heat exchanger and the numbers 1, 2, and 3 are the tags for each equipment. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Equipment** & **Size** & **Cost (5)** \\ \hline Supercritical Extractor & 0.5 L & 23,053.13 \\ Heat Exchanger 1 & 2 m\({}^{2}\) & 1846.93 \\ Heat Exchanger 2 & 2 m\({}^{2}\) & 1846.93 \\ Heat Exchanger 3 & 2 m\({}^{2}\) & 1846.93 \\ Compressor & 20 kW & 25,053.13 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 6: List of equipment. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Spes** & **Lab** & **Industrial** \\ \hline Processing Capacity & 10 g & 15 kg/h \\ Production Capacity & 0.0157 g & 0.023 kg/h \\ CO\({}_{2}\)—inlet & & 3489.54 kg/h \\ Compressors & 1 un. & 1 un. \\ Compressor Power & 3.314 W & 20 kW \\ Heat Exchangers & 1 un. & 3 un. \\ Heat Exchange Area & 10.7 cm\({}^{2}\) & 2 m\({}^{2}\)/un. \\ Water duty & 0.6 kg/h & 10,800 kg/h \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 5: Simulation specification summary. As can be observed, the supercritical separator and compressor account for 43% and 47%, respectively, in the CAPEX distribution of the total cost of the equipment, while the heat exchangers show a similar percentage. These results indicate that in order to reduce the cost of the process, the supercritical separator and compressor should be the focus, either during project development or supplier negotiation. Utilities represent the main raw costs required for process operation; other costs such as employee payments are associated with the working capital using [PERSON] methodology of economic evaluation. According to Figure 5, water cooling accounts for the main costs of the OPEX distribution. The potential for optimization comes from better water use in the process. For this, energy integration or the use of methodologies to reduce water consumption should have a significant impact on the process. The results from the software for the EACP economic analysis are organized in Table 8 with the inputs and outputs. The data are based on the simulation and scale-up process for one year of operation. Figure 4: CAPEX distribution. Figure 5: OPEX distribution. From the analysis, it is possible to note the feasibility of the process. The NPV, which is positive within the lifetime of the plant, and the payback time of two years are great performance indicators for the process. Once the product of the plant has a high aggregate value, high economic revenue can be expected on a large scale. The break-even point represents the minimal production capacity of the plant that is necessary for the process to exceed its own cost of production. A value of less than 25% capacity was achieved in this work. Other studies that also used the supercritical extraction technique and performed an economic evaluation such as those by [PERSON] et al. [33] and [PERSON] et al. [34] have shown the feasibility of the supercritical-extractor-based processes.