How To Calculate The True Cost of Steam

Knowing the correct cost of steam is important for many reasons, and all of them have to do with improving the company’s bottom line. To determine the true cost of steam, we need to know more details about the steam in question.

If the plant has only one steam generator (boiler), uses a single fuel, and has a single steam pressure level, it is relatively easy to assign a cost to the steam. However, in most cases, there are multiple steam sources and multiple fuels. There are also multiple steam pressure levels with multiple paths by which the steam pressure is reduced; for example, steam pressure can be reduced via pressure-reducing valves (PRVs) or turbines. Determining the true cost of steam then becomes far more complex.

One of the problems is that the cost of steam depends on the generation rate, especially in complex multi-boiler multi-fuel plants that also have steam turbines.

In the following equations, the operating cost of the boiler is CO per hour and the process requires S pounds/hour (lb/h) of steam. To deliver this much steam, it is necessary to actually generate (1+X)S lb/h of steam, where X is a factor typically ranging from 5 to 20%. So we already have two distinct equations to determine the cost of steam:
(a) generating cost CG, $/lb = CO/(1+X)S
(b) consumption cost CG, $/lb = CO/S

This is just a standard formula, for specific costs, you can tell us all the information that our engineers account for you.