(
In this study, we only considered the fuel cost of EFB including the transportation cost of EFB as the operating cost except maintenance, labor, drug, and reprocessing costs necessary to operate the remaining power plants. EFB fuel cost is $ 14.08 / ton.
4. Objective function
Considering depreciation as 20 years of life for a typical power plant, annual equipment cost is estimated as Eq. (31). Annual operating costs are calculated by Eq. (32) that multiplies the EFB fuel cost by the annual usage. The objective function was to minimize the annual total cost (AC) that annual equipment costs plus annual operating costs.
Depreciation cost = (