Benzyl alcohol, reagent grade (at least 99.8 wt%)

Activity Benzyl alcohol by continuous hydrolysis of benzyl chloride with soda solution, GLO: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedbenzyl-alcohol-1:benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis:product:benzyl-alcoholPreliminaryReport 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 reagent-grade benzyl alcohol (at least 99.8 wt%), gate-to-gate. Continuous countercurrent hydrolysis with soda solution and toluene as inert solvent, extraction of the spent brine, vacuum distillation in two columns. Feeds, by-products, water and heat from the worked example of a 1982 patent (pilot scale), the rest by stoichiometry; electricity from core's Tier 0 default.

Reference product: 1 kilogram of Benzyl alcohol, reagent grade (at least 99.8 wt%)
Chemical: benzyl-alcohol
CAS: 100-51-6
Code: benzyl-alcohol-1:benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis:product:benzyl-alcohol
Dataset: benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis version 0.1.0 · UUID db869d77-4a88-590d-8ab3-790cefd47d4e
Activity UUID: not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database: cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)
Process: Benzyl alcohol by continuous hydrolysis of benzyl chloride with soda solution
Geography: GLO · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period: 1982 · valid until 1987
Technology: continuous countercurrent hydrolysis with aqueous sodium carbonate at 145 degC and 18 bar, toluene as inert solvent, two vacuum columns; batch stirred-tank hydrolysis, the water-only route without base (US 5,750,801) and benzaldehyde hydrogenation are not modelled · level current
Boundary: gate-to-gate: reactor column (washing, hydrolysis and extraction zones), degassing, solvent column and product column; benzyl chloride, soda ash, water, steam and power from outside; brine to treatment
Classification: ISIC Rev.4 2011 (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 Benzyl alcohol, reagent grade (at least 99.8 wt%)

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 7 calculated, 3 given, 1 assumed. Pedigree scores (1 best, 5 worst): reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, geographical correlation, further technological correlation.

Preliminary3 exchanges are not yet linked to a background dataset. They count no burden, so the inventory is incomplete: do not read a result from it as complete.

Input	Amount	Unit	Provenance	Pedigree	Linked to
Benzyl chloride feed:benzyl-chloride EP 0 064 486 A1 (1982), Table 1, Example 1, scaled to the Second Product (48.3 against 40.5 kg/h; Table 2 rounds it to 1.19 kg/kg); compare the stoichiometric 1.1705 kg/kg (overall yield 98.2 % of theory, benchmarks/oxygenates.yaml)	1.193	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'benzyl-chloride'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Sodium carbonate (soda ash), dissolved to a 10.9 wt% solution feed:sodium-carbonate EP 0 064 486 A1 (1982), Table 2, Example 1, Second Product (10 % molar excess)	0.551	kilogram	given	4 4 5 4 4	Atlas (pinned): Soda ash by the Solvay ammonia-soda process (1000 t/d light ash, concept) (Sodium carbonate, Light soda ash to storage, GLO) compatible: grade the input names sodium-carbonate only; sodium-carbonate (Sodium carbonate, Light soda ash to storage) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation none (single-output); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Process water (soda solution and wash water) feed:water EP 0 064 486 A1 (1982), Table 1, Example 1, scaled to the Second Product	6	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	market for water, deionised (water, deionised, RoW) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Electricity feed:electricity cheme tier-defaults 1.0.0: electricity [ASSUMED]: 1.2 MJ (0.333 kWh) per kg of product, attributed to the Gendorf (2000) site average that the ecoinvent v2-era chemicals proxies used. ASSUMED, not read in either source: Hischier et al. 2005 (p. 61) names the Gendorf (2000) average as the default but prints no value, and the number could not be confirmed in an open copy of Althaus et al. 2007 (ecoinvent report No. 8) electricity	0.3333	kilowatt hour	assumed	4 5 5 4 5	market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Steam, as heat delivered (reactor column and two vacuum columns) feed:steam EP 0 064 486 A1 (1982), Table 3, Example 1, Second Product; the carrier is our reading (see parameters q_r and q_d); gross, no heat recovery credited	0.955	kilowatt hour	given	4 4 5 4 5	Atlas: heat from steam, per kWh (Atlas unit proxy) (heat from steam, by energy, GLO)
Dibenzyl ether bottoms of the product column output:heavy-ends EP 0 064 486 A1 (1982), Table 1 (continued), Example 1; the bottoms leave as dibenzyl ether (description of Fig. 1). Fate (use as a solvent or plasticiser, or incineration) not stated	0.0055	kilogram	given	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (no chemical slug or factor id); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Benzyl alcohol lost (product column bottoms and the brine), to waste treatment output:organic-residue closes the balance: the benzyl chloride not found in the product or the dibenzyl ether, counted as benzyl alcohol (ASSUMED; it includes the 0.10 % unconverted benzyl chloride and the benzaldehyde of the source). The split between the bottoms and the brine is not stated. Cross-check: Table 1 (continued), Example 1 gives 41.0 kg/h First Product and 40.5 kg/h Second Product, so the product column bottoms are about 12 kg/t, of which about 5.6 kg/t is dibenzyl ether; the other 7 kg/t, benzyl alcohol by the patent's note that such bottoms must hold up to 50 % of it (description of the problem), lie within this residual	0.01283	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (no chemical slug or factor id); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Spent brine to wastewater treatment (water) output:wastewater the process water less the water the hydrolysis consumes (2 C7H7Cl + Na2CO3 + H2O -> 2 C7H8O + 2 NaCl + CO2); the drained spent solution of EP 0 064 486 A1 (description of Fig. 1). Its salt is counted by emission:NaCl and emission:Na2CO3	5.916	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	Atlas (plant): wastewater to treatment, per kg (Atlas unit proxy) (wastewater, by mass, GLO) compatible: grade the input names wastewater only; wastewater (Wastewater treated) is taken; unit kilogram; 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

Flow	Direction	Compartment	Amount	Unit	Provenance	Pedigree
Dissolved solids cfecebe1-1e13-458d-85bc-d40a9f934927	emission	water / surface water	0.5506	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Dissolved solids cfecebe1-1e13-458d-85bc-d40a9f934927	emission	water / surface water	0.05172	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Carbon dioxide, fossil 349b29d1-3e58-4c66-98b9-9d1a076efd2e	emission	air	0.2073	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/benzyl-alcohol-1/lca/datasets/benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis.yaml in library version a3c52e4.

Used by

Benzyl chloroformate (neat) to cold storage benzyl-chloroformate-1:benzyl-chloroformate-by-semi-batch-phosgenation-of-benzyl-alcohol-1000-t-a:product:BCF

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

KPI	Value	Reference range	Position
Heat (steam) per t of benzyl alcohol No open source independent of the dataset's with a benzyl alcohol heat or steam figure was found (2026-11-05). Read: US 5,750,801 and CS 216044 B1 (no energy figures), IPCC 2006 Vol. 3 ch. 2 (process CO2 only), the EU LVOC BREF 2017 (doi:10.2760/77304; no benzyl alcohol section). Not read: Ullmann's chapter on benzyl alcohol (licensed). The dataset's value is EP 0 064 486 A1, Table 3, a pilot figure.	– kWh/t	not available	not evaluated
Benzyl alcohol yield on benzyl chloride, fraction of theory	– kg/kg	0.95 to 0.955 kg/kg Czechoslovak patent CS 216044 B1 (filed 1979-10-22, published 1982-10-29), Method of continuous preparation of benzyl alcohol (other)	not evaluated

How to use it

Downloads

cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4.xlsx · bw2io ExcelImporter workbook (bw2io 0.9 Excel layout) · the whole database
code benzyl-alcohol-1:benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis:product:benzyl-alcohol
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
process db869d77-4a88-590d-8ab3-790cefd47d4e (processes/db869d77-4a88-590d-8ab3-790cefd47d4e.json)
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-multifunctional.json · Brightway 2.5 multifunctional database (JSON, for the multifunctional package) (cheme-as-code/lci-multifunctional/v1) · the whole database
code benzyl-alcohol-1:benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis:product:benzyl-alcohol
cheme_as_code_lci-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whl · the installer

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", "benzyl-alcohol-1:benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis:product:benzyl-alcohol"))

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

Benzyl alcohol, reagent grade (at least 99.8 wt%), from Benzyl alcohol by continuous hydrolysis of benzyl chloride with soda solution (dataset benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity benzyl-alcohol-1:benzyl-alcohol-continuous-soda-hydrolysis:product:benzyl-alcohol. 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}
}