HOW MUCH DOES A VACUUM VAPOR DEGREASER COST?

The simple answer is the capital cost is generally 2 to 2.5 times the cost of an Open Top Vapor Degreaser (OTVD). The more complete question is “What is the life cycle cost of a Vacuum Vapor Degreaser (VVD)”? The answer is “That mainly depends on the solvent required”.  Most industries like to look at the life cycle costs over 20 years, which is the standard. Indeed most of our equipment installed in the 1990’s are still operating. Another analysis is the payback time. The standard here is generally 3 to 5 years which roughly corresponds to 25 to 15 % compounded rate of return annually. Let’s take a look at a 15% rate of return for a 5 year period.

As an example we’ll use an 8’ long X 2.5’ wide degreaser costing $100,000. The equivalent Vacuum Vapor Degreaser (VVD) to handle the same size basket would cost $250 to $300K. The question is will the VVD save me from $150 to $200K over a 5 year period? Everyone wants to look at energy, waste and labor costs. In truth these are relatively small compared to the cost of the chemistry so for simplicity let’s look at the money saved on just the solvent recovered.

The EPA has accumulated enough data to predict the amount of solvent an OTVD will emit based on size, control equipment used and hours of operation (working hours, idling hours and the hours a machine is turned off). For the above OTVD let’s assume the machine has parts in it 6 hours a day, is idling with no parts for 2 hours and is shut off for 16 hours a day. Let’s also assume the OTVD has a freeboard ratio of 1,  has a working cover (cover closes during degreasing), has a good hoist speed and has freeboard refrigeration. This unit should use roughly 15000 lbs of solvent for a 250 day year. The VVD would use roughly 300 lbs. for the same time period. The solvent saved is 14,700 lbs./year. Now we have a simple cost to compare.

Solvent $ / LB Solvent $ / year Solvent $ / 5 years
$2 / lb. $29,400 $147,000
$10 / lb. $147,000 $735,000
$25 / lb. $365,000 $1,837,500

If you have an OTVD now, you can do your own calculation. The savings can safely be assumed to be 98% of the total solvent cost. Multiply that number by 5. If you don’t have data, contact us and we can supply you with the numbers. See PERFORMANCE for additional savings.