Most freeze dryer sellers lead with shelf area, model numbers and pounds per batch. None of those tell you what a system costs to run. This one number does, and it is yours to calculate rather than ours to claim.
Not pounds of finished product. Pounds of water. The distinction is the whole point.
Finished product weight varies with starting moisture, so cost per pound of product is not comparable between products or between operations. Cost per pound of water removed is, because water is what the machine actually does work on.
It makes three comparisons possible that are otherwise guesswork: two machines against each other, two of your own products against each other, and one machine this year against the same machine next year.
Be consistent about what you include; consistency matters more than perfect completeness.
Energy per cycle × your rate. Refrigeration dominates, vacuum and shelf heating follow.
Labour per cycle × your rate. Loading, unloading, cleaning, monitoring.
Consumables and maintenance reserve. Pump oil, seals, filters, scheduled service.
Allocated overhead. Floor space, depreciation, whatever your accounting assigns.
The forgotten one: the batches you do not make. If a cycle runs 30 hours instead of 24, you make four batches a week instead of five — and that lost fifth batch belongs in the economics even though no invoice shows it.
Using the standard 1,000 lb batch so the arithmetic is checkable.
Batch: 1,000 lb at 80% starting moisture, dried to 2%.
Water removed: 795.9 lb.
Cycle cost: 1,000 kWh × $0.12 = $120.00, plus 2 labour hours × $25 = $50.00. Total $170.00.
Cost per pound of water removed: $170.00 ÷ 795.9 = $0.214 / lb.
Every input there is an example, not a Sublidyne figure. Put your own numbers in the calculator and the answer is about your operation instead of somebody else’s marketing.
Worth stating plainly, because the absence is deliberate.
Cost per pound depends on your utility rates, your labour, your loading practice and your product. Any figure we published would be measured on one product in one plant and would be wrong for yours — and a comparative version ("X% lower than...") would be a performance claim we have committed not to make.
So we publish the instrument instead. Use it on our quotes as readily as on anyone else’s. That is the point of it.
Total the cost of one cycle — energy, labour, consumables, allocated overhead — and divide by the pounds of water that cycle removed. Not pounds of finished product: pounds of water, because water is what the machine does work on.
Finished product weight depends on starting moisture, so cost per pound of product is not comparable between products or operations. Water removed is the actual work done, so it is comparable everywhere.
Because it depends on your utility rates, labour, loading practice and product. Any published figure would be measured on one product in one plant and wrong for yours. We publish the formula instead.