In common industrial practice, the length of the discrete interest period is assumed to be 1 year and the fixed interest rate i is based on 1 year. However, there are cases where other time units are employed. Even though the actual interest period is not 1 year, the interest rate is often expressed on an annual basis. Consider an example in which the interest rate is 3 percent per period PLANT DESIGN AND ECONOMICS FOR CHEMICAL ENGINEERS FIGURE 7-1 Comparison among total amounts accumulated with simple interest, discrete compound interest, and continuous compound nominal interest. ...


