An open database of chemical process designs, with every detail behind the numbers. Find a process, see what it makes and uses, follow chemicals between processes, and check how far each design has been taken. Why open
Double-column cryogenic air separation without argon column, producing 500 t/d gaseous oxygen at 30 barg and 10,000 Nm3/h pipeline nitrogen, with LOX/LIN backup storage.
Air→Nitrogen, Oxygen
Screening · level Balanced · not reviewed12 open items
Ethylene and oxygen react in an aqueous PdCl2/CuCl2 catalyst solution in a boiling bubble column; the cycle gas is cooled, scrubbed with water and recycled with a purge, and the crude acetaldehyde is purified in two live-steam columns. Ethylene and oxygen are boundary feeds. Concept stage.
Ethylene, Hydrogen chloride, Oxygen, Water→Acetaldehyde
Concept · not reviewed
Liquid-phase carbonylation of methanol with carbon monoxide on an iridium/ruthenium catalyst with methyl iodide promoter, a flash heated with reactor heat, light-ends, drying and heavy-ends columns and methanol scrubbing of the vents, to glacial acetic acid. Concept stage, assumed basis.
Carbon monoxide, Hydrogen, Iodomethane (methyl iodide), Methanol→Acetic acid
Concept · not reviewed
Acetic acid cracked to ketene at 700 C under vacuum with a triethyl phosphate catalyst, ketene absorbed and reacted in acetic acid, crude anhydride distilled to 99.5 wt%; the dilute acid is recovered and the vent gas fuels the furnace. Concept stage, assumed basis.
Acetic acid, Air, Ammonia, Methane, Triethyl phosphate→Acetic anhydride
Concept · not reviewed
Cumene is oxidised with air to cumene hydroperoxide, concentrated under vacuum and cleaved with sulfuric acid to phenol and acetone; the product is neutralised and fractionated, and alpha-methylstyrene is hydrogenated back to cumene. Concept stage, assumed basis, preliminary gate-to-gate LCI per kg acetone (foreground only).
Air, Cumene, Hydrogen, Sodium hydroxide, Sulfuric acid, Water→Acetone, Phenol
Concept · not reviewed
A batch plant: PCl3 is dosed over 2 h into acetic acid at 313 K, the mixture settles into an upper acetyl chloride and a lower crude phosphorous acid phase, and the upper phase is distilled. Concept stage, 1460 kg per batch every 5.78 h on a dedicated train, thermal screening with a rate-constant sensitivity, preliminary gate-to-gate LCI.
Acetic acid, Nitrogen, Phosphorus trichloride, Water→Acetyl chloride, Phosphorous acid (phosphonic acid)
Concept · not reviewed
For the data, cite the Process Atlas paper; for the platform that builds and checks it, the ChemE-as-Code paper.
Schweidtmann, A. M. & Weber, J. M. (2026, in preparation). Process Atlas: an open, git-native, reproducible library and life cycle inventory of chemical processes (working title).
@unpublished{schweidtmann_process_atlas,
author = {Schweidtmann, Artur M. and Weber, Jana M.},
title = {{Process Atlas: an open, git-native, reproducible library and life cycle inventory of chemical processes (working title)}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://atlas.cheme-as-code.org},
note = {in preparation}
}Schweidtmann, A. M. (2026). ChemE-as-Code: An Open-Source Platform for Agentic AI in Chemical Engineering. arXiv:2611.07947. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2611.07947
@misc{schweidtmann_cheme_as_code,
author = {Schweidtmann, Artur M.},
title = {{ChemE-as-Code: An Open-Source Platform for Agentic AI in Chemical Engineering}},
year = {2026},
eprint = {2611.07947},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2611.07947},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07947}
}