The GATE Grind

GATE 2025 CH – Question 26

Plant Design and Economics · Process economics and cost estimation · 1 mark · Multiple choice

The capital cost ($CC$) of an industrial equipment varies with its capacity ($S$) as $CC \propto S^\beta$. The rule-of-thumb value of the exponent $\beta$ is

  1. 0.4
  2. 0.6
  3. 0.8
  4. 1.0

Practise this question in The GATE Grind →

Show answer and explanation

Correct answer: (B) 0.6

Explanation

The six-tenths rule says that the cost of equipment scales with the capacity raised to the power 0.6 (the exponent is about 0.6 for most process equipment).