Aqueous ammonia (ammonium hydroxide), 25 wt% NH3, 25 degC

Activity Ammonium hydroxide (aqueous ammonia, 25 wt% NH3) by continuous dilution of liquid ammonia in water, GLO: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedammonium-hydroxide-1:ammonium-hydroxide-25wt-dilution:product:ammonium-hydroxideReport a problem with this dataset
Research outputAn inventory from a research design at the design maturity its process states, not verified plant data: check its calculation maturity and review status before use. Background activities are referenced by name only; no background data is included. All caveats

What it is

Tier 0 screening estimate per 1 t of 25 wt% aqueous ammonia (ammonium hydroxide), gate-to-gate. Feeds from the product's strength; heat rejected from evaluated heats of solution (NBS 1982) and the ammonia equation of state; pump electricity ASSUMED. No plant data.

Reference product
1 kilogram of Aqueous ammonia (ammonium hydroxide), 25 wt% NH3, 25 degC
Chemical
ammonium-hydroxide
CAS
1336-21-6
Code
ammonium-hydroxide-1:ammonium-hydroxide-25wt-dilution:product:ammonium-hydroxide
Dataset
ammonium-hydroxide-25wt-dilution version 0.1.0 · UUID ec1b1773-c569-5e5d-92cd-db9772650011
Activity UUID
not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)
Process
Ammonium hydroxide (aqueous ammonia, 25 wt% NH3) by continuous dilution of liquid ammonia in water
Geography
GLO · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period
2026 · valid until 2031
Technology
continuous single-stage dilution of anhydrous liquid ammonia with water and cooling of the solution below its boiling point (process of US 4,752,452); absorption of ammonia-plant purge or flash gas is not modelled · level current
Boundary
gate-to-gate: metering of liquid ammonia and water, single-stage mixing, cooling of the solution (evaporative cooler and feed-ammonia exchanger); storage and loading excluded
Classification
ISIC Rev.4 2012 (taxonomy/families.yaml (ISIC Rev.4) of the process's families)
System model
attributional, cut-off (docs/system-model.md, methodology 1.1.0)
Allocation
mass, 100 % of the dataset to this product (rule single-output, from default)
one product: nothing to allocate
Rights
CC-BY-4.0

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Aqueous ammonia (ammonium hydroxide), 25 wt% NH3, 25 degC

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 3 calculated, 1 assumed. Pedigree scores (1 best, 5 worst): reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, geographical correlation, further technological correlation.

InputAmountUnitProvenancePedigreeLinked to
Ammonia, anhydrous, refrigerated liquid
feed:ammonia
the NH3 in the product; no loss counted (vent and handling losses are a TODO exclusion, not zero)
0.2502kilogramcalculated4 4 3 3 4Atlas (pinned): Ammonia from natural gas (1500 t/d, steam reforming with air-fed secondary reformer, Haber-Bosch loop) (Liquid ammonia product (refrigerated, to the battery limit), NL)
compatible: grade the input names ammonia only; ammonia (Liquid ammonia product (refrigerated, to the battery limit)) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation exergy (deviation); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Water, demineralised
feed:water
the water in the product; demineralised quality is ASSUMED for a technical grade (the process of US Patent 4,752,452 only softens its water to remove hardness and salts, so demineralised water is a conservative stand-in)
0.7498kilogramcalculated4 4 3 3 4market for water, deionised (water, deionised, RoW) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Electricity, pumps
feed:electricity
ASSUMED hydraulic work of the three pumped liquids (dp, eta); no open figure for the process. core's Tier 0 site-average default (333 kWh/t) is not used: it stands for reaction and separation plants and would overstate a dilution by more than two orders of magnitude. The cooling circuit's pumps and fans are in the cooling-water utility
electricity
6.202e-4kilowatt hourassumed4 5 5 5 5market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Heat of solution rejected to cooling water
output:cooling-water
enthalpy balance at 25 degC: integral heat of solution of NH3 gas to 2.83 mol H2O per mol (NBS 1982) less the enthalpy that the refrigerated liquid feed takes up to become gas at 25 degC (CoolProp 8.0.0); water fed and product leave at 25 degC (ASSUMED). The process of US Patent 4,752,452 (Harbolt and Murata, Union Oil Company of California, 1988) rejects the heat in an evaporative cooler and uses the cold liquid feed for the last cooling step, so the cooling-water service sees the net duty
cold, 25 degC
0.02603kilowatt hourcalculated4 4 4 3 4Atlas (plant): cooling water service, per kWh heat rejected (Atlas screening proxy) (heat rejected to cooling water, GLO)
compatible: grade the input names cooling-water only; cooling-water (Heat rejected to cooling water, 25/35 degC) is taken; unit kilowatt hour; carrier cold, 25 degC from cold, 25 degC; system model cutoff (one database); allocation mass (single-output); boundary plant gate of a site utility: no utility market yet (docs/markets.md)

Elementary flows

No elementary flows are exported for this activity (pass-through emissions and free inputs are left out, see the caveats).

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/ammonium-hydroxide-1/lca/datasets/ammonium-hydroxide-25wt-dilution.yaml in library version a3c52e4.

Used by

No other activity of this database links to it.

How good it is

Review
Not reviewed: no LCI review record yet
Data quality
not available
Mass and carbon closure
Not available: a hand-written dataset: no lca/manifest.json records its balance
Change report
Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.

KPI benchmark positions

KPIValueReference rangePosition
Heat rejected to cooling water per t of aqueous ammonia
No open source with a measured or design cooling duty for aqueous ammonia production found (2026-11-05). Read: US 4,752,452 (states that the heat of dilution is large, gives no figure), LVIC-AAF BREF 2007 (no aqueous ammonia production section; ammonia solutions only as recycled scrubber liquor), ATSDR 2004 (properties only). The dataset's value is our enthalpy balance from the NBS tables (1982) and the ammonia equation of state, not a check.
– kWh/tnot availablenot evaluated
Electricity per t of aqueous ammonia
No open source with an electricity figure for aqueous ammonia production found (2026-11-05). Read: US 4,752,452 (pumps and fans named, no power), LVIC-AAF BREF 2007, ATSDR 2004. The dataset's value is an ASSUMED pump-work estimate.
– kWh/tnot availablenot evaluated
NH3 per mass of aqueous ammonia product– kg/kg0.28 to 0.3 kg/kg
ATSDR (2004) Toxicological Profile for Ammonia. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta (government)
not evaluated

How to use it

Downloads

A file with this activity alone is not available: each file above is the whole database, and the line under it says how to find this activity there.

import bw2data as bd
from cheme_as_code_lci import install

bd.projects.set_current("my-project")   # holds your licensed background + biosphere3
install("cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4.xlsx", background="ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff", location="DE")
activity = bd.get_activity(("cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4", "ammonium-hydroxide-1:ammonium-hydroxide-25wt-dilution:product:ammonium-hydroxide"))

While any exchange of the database has no mapping, install() writes nothing and only lists the unlinked exchanges. So the last line finds no activity until the gaps are mapped: the download section gives the ways to use the database now.

How to cite

Aqueous ammonia (ammonium hydroxide), 25 wt% NH3, 25 degC, from Ammonium hydroxide (aqueous ammonia, 25 wt% NH3) by continuous dilution of liquid ammonia in water (dataset ammonium-hydroxide-25wt-dilution 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity ammonium-hydroxide-1:ammonium-hydroxide-25wt-dilution:product:ammonium-hydroxide. Cite the Process Atlas paper (in preparation, 2026), by Artur M. Schweidtmann and Jana M. Weber, and the ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database version preview-a3c52e4.

DOI: none yet (the Process Atlas paper is in preparation)

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).

BibTeX
@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

BibTeX
@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}
}