[UWkid]

Greetings, I'm new to this forum and new to chemical engineering.  I'm in my second year of study and in one of my core subject lab courses, we're doing a separation simulation using Aspen.  We're limited to simple unit flash operations.  My only issue is in the cost analysis, here's my problem:

Feed: 700kg/min of simple three component alkane mixture @ 1200kPa and 319K (liquid)

The flash unit will vapourize 59% of the feed due to the drop in pressure and temp.

Output: 101.3kPa, 323K

That's the solution, I ended up with.  The problem involves the recovery of one component (butane) and I've maximized that and found a price on the Petro Canada website.  So I can approximate revenue.  What I also require are possible operating costs, flash unit cost, maintenance cost.  From anybody's experience in the field, could you please provide me with a ballpark answer for these figures or link me to a resource so that I could find the answers myself?  I've exhausted google, my TA won't provide an answer and company's don't seem too keen on responding to a second year project request.  Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

I'm kind of going above and beyond the call of duty with my cost analysis but I want to a) impress the TA and b) gain some insight into the resources for finding this information.