A co2 cost calculator is only useful if it counts the gas you never used. Most operators know their invoice total and have no idea what fraction of it reached a glass.
Pull these together before you can work out anything meaningful. Your invoices have most of them.
Use figures from your own invoices. Nothing here is sent anywhere, and no prices of ours are assumed.
At these figures, about $2,700.00 of your annual spend buys gas you never dispense. Assumption: 25% of each delivery is lost on a conventional low-pressure bulk system. The conventional bulk default reflects the venting figure on our homepage (approximately 30% or more); change it to match what you measure. The free assessment replaces the assumption with your actual usage.
Delivered volume minus dispensed volume equals loss. On a cylinder system that loss is small. On a conventional low-pressure bulk system it is not, because the system vents continuously as pressure builds, and it vents most when turnover is slowest. An enclosed high pressure CO2 system has no routine venting cycle, so that gap closes.
That loss can be approximately 30 percent or more of a delivery. If your effective cost per usable pound is a third higher than your invoiced cost per pound, a cheaper headline rate has not saved you anything.
Speak with a Territory Sales Manager
You will get back a real cost per usable pound and what an enclosed system would change.
Gas is only part of what your current arrangement costs.
Compare cost per usable pound, not cost per delivered pound, and include the operational costs above. That is the comparison that reflects what you actually spend to keep gas flowing.
We run exactly this calculation as part of the free assessment, using your invoices and your measured consumption rather than assumptions.
A CO2 usage calculator that only divides spend by delivered pounds tells you your invoice rate, not your commercial CO2 cost. The number that matters is cost per pound you actually dispensed.
Divide total spend by dispensed volume rather than delivered volume, then add the handling, storage and downtime the gas invoice never shows.
Numbers make this concrete. Take a venue buying 1,000 lb of CO2 a month on a conventional low-pressure bulk system, and assume a 25 percent venting loss, which is within the range we routinely measure.
1,000 lb
Delivered and invoiced each month
250 lb
Lost to venting before use
750 lb
Actually dispensed
+33%
Real cost per usable pound versus the invoice rate
Gas is only part of what a supply arrangement costs. These are the lines that sit in payroll, in comps, and in lost service rather than in the invoice you compare.
Ordering, receiving, moving, changing and returning cylinders. On a busy site this is hours a week, and it is usually your most experienced person doing it mid-service.
Floor area given over to full and empty bottles, in buildings where floor area is the most expensive thing you have.
Out-of-schedule runs cost money with any supplier. A schedule built from measured usage is what makes them rare.
A dry keg line at peak. This is almost always the largest number and the one nobody puts in the comparison.
The headline rate varies by market, volume and distance from a depot, and on its own it is not the useful number. Cost per usable pound after venting loss is what actually determines your spend.
Compare delivered volume with dispensed volume over a period. If you cannot measure dispensed volume, the gap between what you buy and what your sales imply is a reasonable proxy, and it is one of the things the assessment measures.
You will get back a real cost per usable pound and what an enclosed system would change.
