Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), FCC C3/C4 cut (LPG, olefinic; propylene not split off)

Activity Fluid catalytic cracking of vacuum gas oil (full-combustion regenerator), GLO: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedfcc-1:fcc-vgo-full-combustion:product:lpgPreliminaryReport 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

Per 1 t of fresh feed, gate-to-gate: riser reactor, regenerator, main fractionator and gas plant. Unallocated multi-output dataset: gasoline, C3/C4 cut, dry gas, light and heavy cycle oil. Yields from a worked example of published correlations, utilities and regenerator emissions from REF BREF ranges, CO2 from the coke's carbon, CH4 and N2O from IPCC defaults.

Reference product: 1 kilogram of Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), FCC C3/C4 cut (LPG, olefinic; propylene not split off)
Chemical: liquefied-petroleum-gas
CAS: not available
Code: fcc-1:fcc-vgo-full-combustion:product:lpg
Dataset: fcc-vgo-full-combustion version 0.1.0 · UUID 3fc9bfd7-0744-51db-a247-a7978c2f80fa
Activity UUID: not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database: cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)
Process: Fluid catalytic cracking of vacuum gas oil (full-combustion regenerator)
Geography: GLO · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period: 1997 · valid until 2015
Technology: fluid catalytic cracking on zeolite catalyst, single-stage regenerator in full combustion (typical for vacuum distillate feeds, BREF section 2.5); residue cracking (RCC), partial combustion and propylene-maximising variants are not modelled · level current
Boundary: gate-to-gate: feed preheat, riser reactor, catalyst stripper, regenerator with waste heat or CO boiler, main fractionator, wet gas compressor and gas plant; steam, power and fuel from outside; flue-gas abatement of the regenerator included only as far as the BREF's emission data include it
Classification: ISIC Rev.4 1920 (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: energy, 16.3 % of the dataset to this product (rule physical-energy, from mappings)
Gasoline, LPG, dry gas, light and heavy cycle oil are fuels and fuel blendstocks, so energy content (LHV) is the physical relationship (hierarchy step 2). LHVs are IPCC 2006 defaults of the matching fuel categories (ASSUMED match), given in the dataset.
Rights: CC-BY-4.0

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), FCC C3/C4 cut (LPG, olefinic; propylene not split off)

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 10 given, 4 calculated, 2 estimated. 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
Vacuum gas oil (fresh FCC feed) feed:vacuum-gas-oil the basis; modelled as C41H73, an ASSUMED pseudo-formula whose 13.0 wt% H closes the hydrogen balance of the sourced yields (PRELIM Table 8 takes 12.5 wt% for a hydrotreated FCC feed; the example's feed of Watson K 12.0 is not hydrotreated)	1.119	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4	Atlas (pinned): Crude oil distillation, atmospheric and vacuum (crude and high vacuum units) (Vacuum gas oil (360 to 560 degC, light and heavy), RER) compatible: grade the input names vacuum-gas-oil only; vacuum-gas-oil (Vacuum gas oil (360 to 560 degC, light and heavy)) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation energy (physical-energy); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Electricity (air blower, wet gas compressor, pumps) feed:electricity EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, Table 3.33, p. 164 (midpoint); no credit for a flue-gas expander electricity	0.03246	kilowatt hour	given	4 4 5 3 3	market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Fired heat (fuel of the feed heater and CO boiler, counted as fuel energy) feed:fuel EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, Table 3.33, p. 164 (midpoint, MJ fuel per t, converted at 3.6 MJ/kWh); the fuel is refinery fuel gas in practice, and natural-gas heat is a proxy (ASSUMED); counting the fuel energy as heat is ASSUMED heat	0.3296	kilowatt hour	given	4 4 5 3 3	Atlas: heat from natural gas, industrial furnace, per kWh (Atlas unit proxy) (heat from natural gas, by energy, GLO)
Steam (feed atomisation, catalyst stripping, aeration), pressure not stated feed:steam EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, Table 3.33, p. 164 (midpoint); gross, the steam the unit raises is not credited	0.06717	kilogram	given	4 4 5 3 3	Atlas: steam, saturated, 11 bar(a), per kg, as heat from steam (Atlas unit proxy) (steam, saturated, 11 bar(a), GLO)
FCC catalyst make-up (zeolite Y in an alumina-clay matrix) input:catalyst EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, Table 3.33, p. 164 (midpoint); mass outside the element balance	0.001623	kilogram	given	4 4 5 3 3	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
Heat rejected to cooling water output:cooling-water the BREF's circulation (Table 3.33, p. 164, midpoint) times rho cp dT, in kWh cold	0.2762	kilowatt hour	calculated	4 4 5 3 3	Atlas (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 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)
Sour water to the sour water stripper and waste water treatment output:wastewater EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, section 3.5.2.2, p. 170 (midpoint); mostly condensed process steam, so outside the element balance as the steam is. It exceeds the steam input by 15 kg/t; the rest of the water (wash water injected into the main fractionator overhead, in practice) has no input in the inventory. TODO source the water input	0.08396	kilogram	given	4 4 5 3 3	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)
Spent catalyst and catalyst fines caught (equilibrium catalyst withdrawn, ESP or cyclone fines) output:spent-catalyst ASSUMED: the make-up leaves as withdrawn catalyst and captured fines, less the fines emitted (BREF section 3.5.2.3, p. 170, names these streams without a rate per t); mass outside the element balance	0.001578	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
Carbon dioxide, fossil 349b29d1-3e58-4c66-98b9-9d1a076efd2e	emission	air	0.1886	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 3
Carbon monoxide, fossil ba2f3f82-c93a-47a5-822a-37ec97495275	emission	air	2.855e-4	kilogram	given	4 4 5 3 3
Methane, fossil 0795345f-c7ae-410c-ad25-1845784c75f5	emission	air	6.418e-6	kilogram	estimated	4 4 4 4 4
Dinitrogen monoxide 20185046-64bb-4c09-a8e7-e8a9e144ca98	emission	air	1.284e-6	kilogram	estimated	4 4 4 4 4
Water 075e433b-4be4-448e-9510-9a5029c1ce94	emission	air	2.901e-5	cubic meter	calculated	4 4 4 4 4
Nitrogen oxides c1b91234-6f24-417b-8309-46111d09c457	emission	air	3.238e-4	kilogram	given	4 4 5 3 3
Sulfur dioxide fd7aa71c-508c-480d-81a6-8052aad92646	emission	air	0.001046	kilogram	given	4 4 5 3 3
Particulates from the regenerator (catalyst fines, size not split) emission:PM unlinked unlinked, no biosphere mapping: emission of PM (literature) has no biosphere3 flow identity and is not in lci/mappings.yaml biosphere	emission	not linked	4.478e-5	kilogram	given	3 4 5 3 3

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/fcc-1/lca/datasets/fcc-vgo-full-combustion.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

KPI	Value	Reference range	Position
Liquid products (C3/C4 cut, gasoline, light and heavy cycle oil) per mass of FCC fresh feed No open range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). Jechura (2019, CBEN 409 course notes, Colorado School of Mines, slide 15) says mass liquid yields are usually 90 to 93 %, but the dataset's dry-gas and coke yields, which fix its liquid yield, come from the worked example of the same notes (slide 16). The REF BREF gives no FCC yield range.	– kg/kg	not available	not evaluated
CO2 from the regenerator per t of FCC fresh feed	– kg/t	160 to 220 kg/t Barthe, P., Chaugny, M., Roudier, S., Delgado Sancho, L. (2015) Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for the Refining of Mineral Oil and Gas. JRC Science and Policy Report EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758 (bref)	not evaluated
Electricity per t of FCC fresh feed No open per-tonne range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF range (Table 3.33, 8 to 50 kWh/t for FCC) is the dataset's own source; US DOE (2007, Table 4-9) and PRELIM v1.0 give figures per barrel (file comment).	– kWh/t	not available	not evaluated
Particulates from the regenerator per t of FCC fresh feed No open range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF's sample of 20 EU FCC units (Table 3.37, 0.015 to 0.100 kg/t, average 0.040) is the dataset's own source.	– kg/t	not available	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 fcc-1:fcc-vgo-full-combustion:product:lpg
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
process 3fc9bfd7-0744-51db-a247-a7978c2f80fa (processes/3fc9bfd7-0744-51db-a247-a7978c2f80fa.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 fcc-1:fcc-vgo-full-combustion · 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", "fcc-1:fcc-vgo-full-combustion:product:lpg"))

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

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), FCC C3/C4 cut (LPG, olefinic; propylene not split off), from Fluid catalytic cracking of vacuum gas oil (full-combustion regenerator) (dataset fcc-vgo-full-combustion 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity fcc-1:fcc-vgo-full-combustion:product:lpg. 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}
}