Formic acid 85 wt% to storage

What it is

Unallocated foreground LCI of Formic acid 85 wt% by methyl formate hydrolysis (6.25 t/h, 50 kt/a), case design, derived from the flowsheet by cheme assess lca.

Reference product

1 kilogram of Formic acid 85 wt% to storage (liquid, 0.12 bar(a), 44.85 degC, 68.9251 % FA (mole))

Chemical

formic-acid

CAS

64-18-6

Code

formic-acid-1:formic-acid-85-wt-by-methyl-formate-hydrolysis-6.25-t-h-50-kt-a:product:FA

Dataset

formic-acid-85-wt-by-methyl-formate-hydrolysis-6.25-t-h-50-kt-a version 0.1.0 · UUID 8f7fd603-106e-54ec-976e-b882a7cd9cc3

Activity UUID

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

Database

cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348 (version preview-c3ab348)

Process

Formic acid 85 wt% by methanol carbonylation and methyl formate hydrolysis (50 kt/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

Methanol carbonylation over sodium methoxide (353 K, 4.5 MPa), methyl formate hydrolysis autocatalysed by formic acid (393 K), methyl formate and methanol recycle, pressure-swing distillation (203 / 12 kPa(a)) to 85 wt%; CO-rich vent burnt; 6.25 t/h · level current

Boundary

gate-to-gate foreground of the plant

Production volume

50,000,000 kg/a (product:FA per hour x operation.hours_per_year (8000 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

mass, 100 % of the dataset to this product (rule single-output, from default)

one product: nothing to allocate

Rights

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

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Formic acid 85 wt% to storage

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

Elementary flows

The streams are the plant's own flows: an amount here is allocated and per 1 kilogram of Formic acid 85 wt% to storage, 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/formic-acid-1/lca/dataset.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

DQR 2.33 · PEF-style DQR 2.5

TeR 3 · GeR 3 · TiR 1 · P 3 · 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: closed
• lci-element-balance: closed
• lci-mass-balance: closed

Change report

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

KPI benchmark positions

Not available: no benchmarked KPI for this dataset.

How to use it

Downloads

• cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348.xlsx · bw2io ExcelImporter workbook (bw2io 0.9 Excel layout) · the whole database
  code formic-acid-1:formic-acid-85-wt-by-methyl-formate-hydrolysis-6.25-t-h-50-kt-a:product:FA
• cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
  process 8f7fd603-106e-54ec-976e-b882a7cd9cc3 (processes/8f7fd603-106e-54ec-976e-b882a7cd9cc3.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 formic-acid-1:formic-acid-85-wt-by-methyl-formate-hydrolysis-6.25-t-h-50-kt-a:product:FA
• 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", "formic-acid-1:formic-acid-85-wt-by-methyl-formate-hydrolysis-6.25-t-h-50-kt-a:product:FA"))

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

Formic acid 85 wt% to storage, from Formic acid 85 wt% by methanol carbonylation and methyl formate hydrolysis (50 kt/a) (dataset formic-acid-85-wt-by-methyl-formate-hydrolysis-6.25-t-h-50-kt-a 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-c3ab348, activity formic-acid-1:formic-acid-85-wt-by-methyl-formate-hydrolysis-6.25-t-h-50-kt-a:product:FA. 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)

@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}
}

@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}
}