Chemical plant and equipment costs can be difficult to locate. There are companies that sell and license expensive reports and other products; however, the high cost and often licensing terms do not allow us to acquire these resources. Below are some approaches and resources we do have access to that you can try.
ICIS Chemical Business, a trade magazine, carried a section titled "New Project and Permanent Plant Shutdowns" from 2009 to at least 2020 that sometimes included: capacities, capital costs, brief note about the process for plants being built. After clicking on link to ICIS Chemical Business, search ABI/INFORM Collection using the phrase ""New Project and Permanent Plant Shutdowns" along with the name of the chemical produced. Use the "Advanced" search and be sure you are searching "Anywhere" so you are searching down into the full text of the PDFs articles.
Up until at least 2011 another trade magazine, Hydrocarbon Processing, published a list of new plants being constructed that would sometimes include capacity and total estimated capital cost. After clicking on the link to Hydrocarbon Processing above, locate the EBSCOhost Applied Science & Technology Source Ultimate database and search the phrase "HPI Construction Boxscore" in quotes. Then search through the full text of the results looking at plants being built. and hopefully the capacities and total estimated capital cost. You can also browse through additional print issues on the 3rd Floor of Evans Library under call number TP690.A1 P4
You can also search other trade magazines using the name of the chemical being produced, plant, and "capital cost" or even just "cost" for news items and articles about new plants being built. You might also find mentions of plant capacities and capital costs in handbooks, as well as the journal literature using Compendex and Google Scholar. Searches like: (1) "ethylene plant" AND "capital cost," (2) Ethylene AND CAPEX, or (3) ethylene AND plant AND "techno-economic"