Hydrogen bromide, Hydrobromic acid 48 wt% (co-product)

What it is

Unallocated foreground LCI of Benzyl bromide by semi-batch light-driven side-chain bromination of toluene with HBr absorption and batch distillation (1000 t/a), case design, derived from the flowsheet by cheme assess lca.

Reference product

1 kilogram of Hydrogen bromide, Hydrobromic acid 48 wt% (co-product) (1.01325 bar(a), 40 degC, 82.8164 % H2O (mole))

Chemical

hydrogen-bromide

CAS

10035-10-6

Code

benzyl-bromide-1:benzyl-bromide-by-semi-batch-light-driven-side-chain-bromination-of-toluene-with-hbr-absorption-and-batch-distillation-1000-t-a:product:HBRACID

Dataset

benzyl-bromide-by-semi-batch-light-driven-side-chain-bromination-of-toluene-with-hbr-absorption-and-batch-distillation-1000-t-a version 0.1.0 · UUID 95d024ae-2c72-577b-a680-5dc750f8d759

Activity UUID

not available (the library assigns none; use the code)

Database

cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)

Process

Benzyl bromide by light-driven semi-batch bromination of toluene, HBr absorption and batch distillation (1000 t/a)

Geography

GLO · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)

Time period

2026 · valid until 2031

Technology

Batch plant: bromine dosed over 5 h into 4 mol of toluene per mol at 363 K under lamps (semi-batch), the HBr vented as it forms through a reflux and a brine vent condenser and absorbed to 48 wt% acid; the crude stripped of toluene at 15 kPa(a) and distilled at 2 kPa(a) in one batch still with a packed column of 5 theoretical stages (forerun at reflux 2 recycled with the toluene, 2 % purged; main cut at reflux 0.5); 887.3 kg per batch, 1127 batches a year on a dedicated train · level current

Boundary

gate-to-gate foreground of the plant

Production volume

1,000,003 kg/a (product:BNBR per hour x operation.hours_per_year (7920 h/a))

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

shares, 34.3 % of the dataset to this product (rule deviation, from study)

No physical relationship is clear (the acid carries no energy content; no exergy, since no property package covers HBr-water), so the WBCSD rule of docs/system-model.md applies. No price of either product is sourced (docs/registry.md, "Missing prices"), so the rule's fallback is mass. Shares 1/0 (all to the benzyl bromide, as benzoyl-chloride-1 gives its hydrochloric acid) were rejected: half the bromine leaves in the acid, which is a saleable bromine product. Substitution of hydrogen-bromide-1's acid (system expansion) belongs to the substitution variant database, not to this cut-off dataset (library ADR 0007).

Rights

CC-BY-4.0: the ChemE-as-Code process library's own concept design (LICENSE-DATA)

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Hydrogen bromide, Hydrobromic acid 48 wt% (co-product)

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 8 assumed, 2 calculated. Pedigree scores (1 best, 5 worst): reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, geographical correlation, further technological correlation.

Elementary flows

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

The streams are the plant's own flows: an amount here is allocated and per 1 kilogram of Hydrogen bromide, Hydrobromic acid 48 wt% (co-product), so it differs from the stream's flow, and it can sum several streams.

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/benzyl-bromide-1/lca/dataset.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

DQR 2.33 · PEF-style DQR 2.7

TeR 3 · GeR 3 · TiR 1 · P 3.8 · C 4 · weakest TeR · primary data 0 %

Mass and carbon closure

Assessed (lca/manifest.json balance, tolerance 5 %: design maturity concept (sourced screening))

• lci-carbon-origin: not-assessable
• lci-element-balance: not-assessable
• lci-mass-balance: closed

• element balance not assessable: no composition for consumable:nitrogen (no composition)
• carbon balance not assessable: no composition for consumable:nitrogen (no composition)

Change report

Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.

KPI benchmark positions

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-bromide-1:benzyl-bromide-by-semi-batch-light-driven-side-chain-bromination-of-toluene-with-hbr-absorption-and-batch-distillation-1000-t-a:product:HBRACID
• cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
  process 95d024ae-2c72-577b-a680-5dc750f8d759 (processes/95d024ae-2c72-577b-a680-5dc750f8d759.json) · the dataset's unallocated multi-output process; this product's allocation factor is in it
• 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-bromide-1:benzyl-bromide-by-semi-batch-light-driven-side-chain-bromination-of-toluene-with-hbr-absorption-and-batch-distillation-1000-t-a · the dataset unallocated, with all its products; this product is its desired_code
• 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-bromide-1:benzyl-bromide-by-semi-batch-light-driven-side-chain-bromination-of-toluene-with-hbr-absorption-and-batch-distillation-1000-t-a:product:HBRACID"))

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

Hydrogen bromide, Hydrobromic acid 48 wt% (co-product), from Benzyl bromide by light-driven semi-batch bromination of toluene, HBr absorption and batch distillation (1000 t/a) (dataset benzyl-bromide-by-semi-batch-light-driven-side-chain-bromination-of-toluene-with-hbr-absorption-and-batch-distillation-1000-t-a 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity benzyl-bromide-1:benzyl-bromide-by-semi-batch-light-driven-side-chain-bromination-of-toluene-with-hbr-absorption-and-batch-distillation-1000-t-a:product:HBRACID. 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)

@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}
}

@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}
}