Cumene, 99.95 wt%

Activity Cumene by zeolite alkylation of benzene with propylene, GLO: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedcumene-1:cumene-zeolite-alkylation:product:cumenePreliminaryReport 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 cumene, gate-to-gate, with transalkylation of the polyisopropylbenzenes. Stoichiometry with a licensor's benzene figure and net steam, air emissions from US EPA facility data, electricity from core's Tier 0 default.

Reference product: 1 kilogram of Cumene, 99.95 wt%
Chemical: cumene
CAS: 98-82-8
Code: cumene-1:cumene-zeolite-alkylation:product:cumene
Dataset: cumene-zeolite-alkylation version 0.1.0 · UUID 68e26c10-57f7-5500-b106-93861112fbc1
Activity UUID: not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database: cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348 (version preview-c3ab348)
Process: Cumene by zeolite alkylation of benzene with propylene
Geography: GLO · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period: 2011 · valid until 2023
Technology: zeolite-catalysed alkylation and transalkylation with distillation; SPA and AlCl3 routes are not modelled · level current
Boundary: gate-to-gate: alkylation, transalkylation, benzene, cumene and PIPB columns; steam and power from outside
Classification: ISIC Rev.4 1920, 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 Cumene, 99.95 wt%

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

Preliminary4 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
Benzene feed:benzene Versalis (2018) Cumene: proprietary process technology, licensing brochure 11-2018 (manufacturer), PDF p. 3	0.651	kilogram	given	4 4 3 3 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'benzene'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Propylene feed:propylene stoichiometry with the sourced benzene and the model heavy ends; compare 0.352 t/t (Versalis brochure, PDF p. 3): a cross-check	0.3519	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'propylene'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
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). Dated: newer ecoinvent proxies rest on later Gendorf reports, so this value may be low for a present-day process 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, net of LP export (not a cut-off value: see modelling) feed:steam Versalis (2018) Cumene: proprietary process technology, licensing brochure 11-2018 (manufacturer), PDF p. 3; pressure not stated; a net figure that embeds a credit for exported steam (deviation, see modelling.multifunctionality)	0.2	kilogram	given	4 4 3 3 4	Atlas: steam, saturated, 11 bar(a), per kg, as heat from steam (Atlas unit proxy) (steam, saturated, 11 bar(a), GLO)
Heavy ends (high boilers, usable as fuel) output:heavy-ends closes the balance; modelled as triisopropylbenzene (ASSUMED; the brochure, PDF p. 4, and LVOC BREF 2.1.1.5, p. 10, only name heavy by-products)	0.002846	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 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

Elementary flows

Flow	Direction	Compartment	Amount	Unit	Provenance	Pedigree
Benzene 28999907-a8a7-45b3-857e-836495ca2aa0	emission	air	5.9e-6	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4
Propylene to air emission:C3H6 unlinked unlinked, no biosphere mapping: emission of C3H6 (literature) has no biosphere3 flow identity and is not in lci/mappings.yaml biosphere	emission	not linked	7.8e-6	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4
Cumene a192f5ac-fb5d-4e14-ac11-3c38283da9d0	emission	air	1.9e-5	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/cumene-1/lca/datasets/cumene-zeolite-alkylation.yaml in library version c3ab348.

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

KPI	Value	Reference range	Position
Cumene per mass of benzene and propylene fed	– kg/kg	0.99 to 0.99 kg/kg Falcke, H. et al. (2017) Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for the Production of Large Volume Organic Chemicals. JRC Science for Policy Report EUR 28882 EN, doi:10.2760/77304 (bref)	not evaluated
Electricity per t of cumene No open source with a cumene electricity figure found (2026-11-01). Read: LVOC BREF section 2.1.1.5 (no utility data), the Versalis brochure (net steam only), the US EPA dataset doi:10.23719/1503030 (fuel, no electricity). Not readable: Luyben 2010, doi:10.1021/ie9011535 (HTTP 403). The dataset's value is core's Tier 0 default, ASSUMED.	– kWh/t	not available	not evaluated

How to use it

Downloads

cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348.xlsx · bw2io ExcelImporter workbook (bw2io 0.9 Excel layout) · the whole database
code cumene-1:cumene-zeolite-alkylation:product:cumene
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
process 68e26c10-57f7-5500-b106-93861112fbc1 (processes/68e26c10-57f7-5500-b106-93861112fbc1.json)
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348-multifunctional.json · Brightway 2.5 multifunctional database (JSON, for the multifunctional package) (cheme-as-code/lci-multifunctional/v1) · the whole database
code cumene-1:cumene-zeolite-alkylation:product:cumene
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-c3ab348.xlsx", background="ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff", location="DE")
activity = bd.get_activity(("cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348", "cumene-1:cumene-zeolite-alkylation:product:cumene"))

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

Cumene, 99.95 wt%, from Cumene by zeolite alkylation of benzene with propylene (dataset cumene-zeolite-alkylation 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-c3ab348, activity cumene-1:cumene-zeolite-alkylation:product:cumene. 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-c3ab348.

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, in preparation). ChemE-as-Code: An Open-Source Platform for AI-Accelerated Chemical Process Engineering (working title).

BibTeX

@unpublished{schweidtmann_cheme_as_code,
  author = {Schweidtmann, Artur M.},
  title = {{ChemE-as-Code: An Open-Source Platform for AI-Accelerated Chemical Process Engineering (working title)}},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://cheme-as-code.org},
  note = {in preparation}
}