A commercial steel pipe is being designed to transport liquid benzene (you can assume that benzene is being saturated) at 185°F to a heat exchanger at a flow rate of 850 gpm. The fittings, valves, supports, and pump are estimated to cost 6 times the installed pipe cost per ft. Annual maintenance is estimated to be 1.5% of the installed pipe and hardware initial costs per ft. For this service, the ASME pipe classification is determined to be 400 and a sch-80 pipe is required. The pump in the system runs 18 hours per day, 260 days per year. The efficiency of the pump is estimated to be 62%. The cost of electrical energy to run the pump is $0.11/kWh. The pipeline is expected to have a 45-year life. An engineering economic analysis reveals that the rate of return due to the investment in the pipeline is 16%.

Use an estimated escalation rate of 2% to account for yearly inflation. The installation should be occurring in 2014.

The mass flow rate is roughly

a. 96 lbm/s
b. 99 lbm/s
c. 102 lbm/s
d. 110 lbm/s