Chemegate

GATE 2025 Chemical Engineering, Q26 · Plant Economics

The correct answer is B, 0.6.

Question

The capital cost (CC) of an industrial equipment varies with its capacity (S) as CC Sβ.\propto S^{β}. The rule-of-thumb value of the exponent ββ is

  • A. 0.4
  • B. 0.6
  • C. 0.8
  • D. 1.0

Official answer: 0.6

Why

GATE 2025 official key: (B). This is the well-known "six-tenths rule" used for scaling equipment capital cost with capacity.

Explanation cross-checked for consistency. Final answer matches the official IIT answer key.