# Scale-up and Economic Assessment of Biofunctional Particles Synthesis for Bilirubin Removal
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Economic Assessment
#### 3.2.4 Analysis of the Cash Flow  
This analysis will consider the previously calculated costs, sales, and capital investment for determining the profitability of the production of the biofunctionalized St-MMA-GMA-PEGMA particles. Besides, this analysis will consider that the whole capital investment contribution is provided by independent capital instead of by long-term debt, which represents a conservative scenario. To consider the chronological value of money necessary for obtaining a realistic economic analysis, the following assumptions were stablished:  
* The total investment is made in year 0. * Yearly total invested funds are determined from the fixed capital investment and the working capital. * Straight-line amortization of 10 years (10%) with zero residual value was considered. * Earnings before taxes are computed as the sales minus costs and amortization. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**RAW MATERIALS**} \\ \hline  & Tm/year & Price (\(\ell\)/kg) & Cost (\(\ell\)/year) \\ Styrene & 121 & 1.23 & 148,641 \\ MMA & 518 & 1.62 & 839,018 \\ GMA & 14 & 1.13 & 16,140 \\ PEGMA & 14 & 418 & 5,970,416 \\ NaOH & 1916 & 7.2 & 13,797,180 \\ PVP & 0.5 & 25 & 11,665 \\ Luperox A75 & 7 & 0.33 & 2325 \\ Al\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{3}\) & 1 & 0.84 & 1200 \\ Hemofiltration solution & 413 & 11.6 & 4,787,243 \\ HSA & 5 & 25,000 & 136,266,667 \\ Ethanol & 7,401,774 & 1.57 & 11,620,786 \\ Water & 2201 & 0.0004 & 880 \\
**TOTAL** & & & 173,462,160 \\ \hline  & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**AUXILIARY SERVICES**} \\ \hline  & **Price** & **Consumption** & **Cost (\(\ell\)/year)** \\ Electricity & 0.19 [40] (\(\ell\)/kWh) & 293.8 kWh/year & 12,438,630 \\ Water & 0.4 (\(\ell\)/m\({}^{3}\)) & 1916 (m\({}^{3}\)/year) & 766 \\ Nitrogen & 5.7 (\(\ell\)/m\({}^{3}\)) & 1371 (m\({}^{3}\)/year) & 7815 \\ \hline  & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**DIRECT OPERATING LABOR**} \\ \hline  & **Units** & **Cost/unit (\(\ell\))** & **Cost (\(\ell\)/year)** \\ Operators & 10 & 23,000 & 230,000 \\ Engineers & 3 & 28,800 & 86,400 \\
**TOTAL DIRECT MANUFACTURING COSTS** & & 186,225,771 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 10: Direct manufacturing costs. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Indirect Manufacturing Costs** & **Estimation** & **Costs (\(\ell\)/Year)** \\ \hline Indirect operating labor & 3 operators & 52,500 \\ Directive management & 1 directive & 36,000 \\ Maintenance & 1\% (Fixed capital investment + working capital) & 17,690,092 \\ Taxes & 0.5\% Fixed capital investment & 8,518,895 \\ Insurances & 1\% Fixed capital investment & 17,037,918 \\ TOTAL & & 43,335,405 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 11: Indirect manufacturing costs. * 30% tax profit is estimated as taxes and, this will be taken from the earnings before taxes for calculating the earnings after taxes. * The sum of the earnings after taxes and the amortization are the generated funds. * The cash flows are the value of generated funds minus the total invested funds. * The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) of 2021 was considered as reference interest (K) with a value of 6.6% [41]. * A CPI average annual increase (inflation) of 5.3% has been considered and a time horizon of 10 years with one start-up year. The annual cash flows and the accumulated cash flows updated to zero year of the plant are shown in Figure 7.  
The cash flow analysis demonstrates that the project is feasible from an economic point of view due to its NPV of 5452 MC and an IRR of 14.5% determined according to Equations (7) and (8), respectively. It is important to mention that this project overcomes the reference interest considered for the project (K = 6.6%), ensuring the cost-effectiveness of the process. The found pay-back time was close to seven years. Finally, the break-even price was determined as the price to obtain NPV = 0, which is 1,715,047 \(\upxi\)/Tm.