From feasibility to FID: Defending Techno Economic Analysis with AVEVA Process Simulation

Posted: September 09, 2026

TechnoEconomic Analysis (TEA) is the combination of technical feasibility study and economic sensitivity analysis of a given process. Traditionally, those two steps are executed sequentially and typically involve iterations. As a common trend in our industry, integration can drive productivity gains that reduce time to decision and enable teams to explore opportunities more thoroughly through automation.  AVEVA™ Process Simulation offers a unique combination of rigorous first-principles simulation and economic analysis. Below is a practical workflow integrating engineering reality and financial analysis.

Why TEA breaks down in real projects

In conceptual studies and preFEED, process teams are often required to make engineering decisions and compromises that ultimately must be evaluated against the business goals of the investment (cost, emissions, returns). When faced with several options, original proposals are often heavily scrutinized, leading teams to choose the conservative approach to minimize risk, without fully exploring the risk sensitivity of the proposed innovation. Designs may be produced quickly, based on old assumptions that may have passed their sell-by dates, and stakeholders cannot always see how they connect to the proposed process.

Typical symptoms of TEA  breakdown:

A spreadsheet “base case” that is hard to reproduce when assumptions change

• Limited case studies due to lack of time
• Comparing options with different boundaries and limits (offsites, compression, utilities, emissions treatment)
• Multifactorial sensitivity analysis that produces data, but doesn’t lead to decisions (“what do we do differently now?”)
• Iterations that create disagreement rather than convergence

The industry faces growing pressure to improve profitability while reducing energy consumption and environmental impact. A good TEA is much more than an estimate. It must create a credible link between process performance, capital investment, operating costs, and business value to allow decision-makers to assess whether a technology or project is technically viable and economically attractive.

What makes the business case and what AVEVA Process Simulation can contribute:

A defensible TEA is one where you can answer, quickly and clearly:

1. What is inside the system boundary?

2. What scenarios, both operational and economic, were tested and why?

3. Which key engineering specifications drive OPEX/CAPEX and where do they come from?

4. What changed between revisions?

5. Which uncertainties matter most, and has the risk induced been adequately qualified?

AVEVA Process Simulation helps by providing a single unique environment that integrates process engineering and economic models to be used for conceptual design through front-end and basic engineering. This helps ensure that the math behind the business case is coherent between the process and economic assumptions.

A practical TEA workflow using AVEVA Process Simulation

1) Start with decision framing
Before building or adapting a model, define:

• The decision (process selections, scale choices, energy integration level, etc.)
• The comparison rules (main criteria decision: capacity, availability, CAPEX limits, margins, environmental impact).

2) Build a fitforpurpose AVEVA Process Simulation
A TEA model does not need to represent every detail, but it must be able to reliably produce the outputs that dominate the feasibility and economics, such as:

• Heat and mass balance
• Utility consumption (steam, power, cooling)
• Heat integration opportunities
• Compression and separation loads
• Induced emissions streams (where relevant to boundary)

The key principle: if a cost driver is material to the business case, it should be calculated from the model or explicitly parameterized with a documented basis.

3) Add all the economic information

After you have designed the base-case process, AVEVA Process Simulation can simultaneously optimize multiple process specifications to maximize or minimize a particular objective, including an economic one. Thanks to the Economics Library provided with AVEVA Process Simulation, you can use fit-for-purpose models to estimate the overall profitability and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a process at the same time as its technical feasibility.

4) Replace “the base case” with a small, structured scenario
Instead of one base-case and many unstructured sensitivities, build a scenario set that matches how stakeholders challenge the business case:

• Expected case: nominal feed/product/ambient
• Constraints case: tighter emissions or utility constraints
• Variability case: feed quality swing, renewable power volatility, seasonal ambient change (as applicable)
• Operability case: turndown or ramping requirement (often ignored in early TEAs)
• Economic scenario: considerations for ROI, including tax interest rates

AVEVA Process Simulation supports automated case studies in a way that keeps scenarios anchored to a consistent process basis (rather than manually edited spreadsheets based on assumptions).

Where AVEVA’s simulation and learning portfolio fits in

In many organizations, TEA’s quality varies less because of tools and more because of capability consistency:

• Different engineers model the same concept differently
• Methodology is inconsistent
• New team members take too long to become productive
• "Tribal knowledge” drives critical assumptions

This is where a simulation and learning approach can materially improve outcomes: establish a repeatable method for model QA, scenario design, and assumption governance, so TEAs become comparable across projects and teams.

Practical enablement elements to pair with the workflow:

• Standard scenario templates for your priority applications (Power-to-X, green hydrogen, refining, CCUS, etc.)
• A review checklist focused on TEA readiness (boundary, scenarios, mapping completeness, change log discipline)

What stakeholders get: Faster alignment, fewer rework loops

When the TEA is built on AVEVA Process Simulation with scenario discipline and traceable mapping:

• Engineering and finance share the same basis for “why cost moved.”
• Option comparisons are more credible (consistent boundaries).
• Sensitivities become actionable (uncertainty you can reduce vs. uncertainty you must accept).
• Revisions become cheaper (less manual spreadsheet surgery).

The result is not a perfect forecast. It is a decision record that remains coherent as the project progresses from concept into preFEED and FEED.

If your teams are repeatedly rebuilding TEAs from scratch, the fastest win is often a shared scenario library and a traceable mapping standard, supported by a rigorous process simulation model that can be reused as the design matures.

If you would like to explore how you can use TEA with AVEVA Process Simulation to evaluate alternatives faster, quantify risk, and make more defensible investment decisions, contact us below to discuss your requirements and see what this could look like for your projects.