Refinery fuel gas, C1-C2 gas to the refinery fuel system (after amine treating)

Activity Hydrocracking of vacuum gas oil, single-stage recycle, RER: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedhydrocracking-1:hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle:product:fuel-gasPreliminaryReport 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 hydrocracked products (LPG to diesel range, unsplit), gate-to-gate, from the EU REF BREF ranges. Fresh vacuum gas oil and hydrogen on a fixed-bed catalyst at high pressure, with recycle of the unconverted oil to 97 to 98 % conversion. The C1-C2 gas and the unconverted-oil bleed are co-products.

Reference product: 1 kilogram of Refinery fuel gas, C1-C2 gas to the refinery fuel system (after amine treating)
Chemical: refinery-fuel-gas
CAS: not available
Code: hydrocracking-1:hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle:product:fuel-gas
Dataset: hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle version 0.1.0 · UUID 7bffe138-3bbc-5c3a-9755-82b7c16fe4d2
Activity UUID: not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database: cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)
Process: Hydrocracking of vacuum gas oil, single-stage recycle
Geography: RER · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period: 1991 · valid until 2004
Technology: high-pressure fixed-bed hydrocracking (100 to 200 barg, 340 to 425 degC, REF BREF Table 2.9), single-stage with recycle of the unconverted oil; once-through, two-stage, mild and residue hydrocracking are not modelled · level current
Boundary: gate-to-gate: feed heater, reactors, HP and LP separators, fractionation; hydrogen, fuel and power from outside; amine treating, sulfur recovery and sour water stripping outside
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, 1.1 % of the dataset to this product (rule physical-energy, from mappings)
The hydrocracked products, the C1-C2 gas and the unconverted-oil bleed are fuels and fuel blendstocks, so energy content (LHV) is the physical relationship (hierarchy step 2). LHVs are IPCC 2006 defaults per cut, the unsplit product's ASSUMED (jet kerosene), given in the dataset.
Rights: CC-BY-4.0

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Refinery fuel gas, C1-C2 gas to the refinery fuel system (after amine treating)

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 12 calculated, 2 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
Vacuum gas oil, fresh feed (about 1.0 % S w/w) feed:vacuum-gas-oil carbon balance over the surrogates: the feed whose carbon leaves as the product, the C1-C2 gas and the bleed. Feed modelled as C225H395S (ASSUMED): 1.02 % S w/w, the sulfur of the linked crude's vacuum gas oil (TotalEnergies crude oil data sheet Johan Sverdrup (assay of 01-Apr-2021, sheet Jul-21, manufacturer literature; the sheet gives no guarantee of accuracy), properties of TBP cuts, vacuum distillate 375 to 565 degC: 1.00 wt% S, 931 kg/m3, UOP K 11.8), and 12.7 % H w/w (ASSUMED, a typical VGO; the assay gives no hydrogen). The REF BREF's hydrocracker feeds of Table 3.62 carry 2 to 3 % S. Feed nitrogen is not modelled (TODO)	1.102	kilogram	calculated	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
Hydrogen, chemical consumption feed:hydrogen REF BREF Table 3.62, p. 192 (midpoint of 260 to 400 Nm3/t, chemical consumption) at 0 degC and 101.325 kPa; make-up for solution and purge losses not included (TODO)	0.0327	kilogram	calculated	3 4 5 3 3	Atlas (pinned): Hydrogen by natural-gas steam methane reforming with PSA (100 000 Nm3/h, steam export) (Hydrogen product 99.9 mol% to battery limit, GLO) compatible: grade the input names hydrogen only; hydrogen (Hydrogen product 99.9 mol% to battery limit) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation exergy (deviation); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Fuel to the reactor and fractionator heaters (as natural gas, methane) feed:natural-gas REF BREF Table 3.66, p. 195 (fuel 400 to 1200 MJ/t, midpoint, read as LHV) over the LHV of methane; a refinery fires mostly its own fuel gas, natural gas is the proxy (ASSUMED) fuel, LHV 50.01 MJ/kg	0.01762	kilogram	calculated	3 4 5 3 3	Atlas: natural gas, per kg, as methane (Atlas unit proxy) (natural gas, by mass, GLO)
Wash water to the reactor effluent feed:water ASSUMED equal to the sour water, so that the water balance closes	0.08814	kilogram	assumed	4 4 4 4 4	market for water, deionised (water, deionised, RoW) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Electricity feed:electricity REF BREF Table 3.66, p. 195 (20 to 150 kWh/t of feed, midpoint) per t of feed electricity	0.09364	kilowatt hour	calculated	3 4 5 3 3	market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Hydrocracking catalyst (Ni, Mo, Co or W oxides on alumina, silica-alumina or zeolite) input:catalyst REF BREF section 3.13.2, p. 195 (57.4 t per Mt of feedstock, average), taken as the make-up; mass outside the element balance	6.324e-5	kilogram	calculated	3 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
Spent hydrocracking catalyst (to regeneration or metals recovery) output:spent-catalyst REF BREF section 3.13.2, p. 195 (spent catalyst fines with metals from the crude and hydrocarbons; supplier take-back for regeneration is common, p. 194); taken equal to the make-up; mass outside the element balance	6.324e-5	kilogram	calculated	3 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
Hydrogen sulfide in the sour gas, to amine treating and sulfur recovery output:H2S all feed sulfur leaves as H2S (the products are practically sulfur-free, REF BREF section 2.13, p. 80); the share dissolved in the sour water is counted here too (ASSUMED)	0.01198	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'hydrogen-sulfide'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Hydrogen balance residual, to the refinery fuel gas output:offgas closes the hydrogen balance of the surrogates with the sourced consumption; near zero by the choice of surrogates (README, What is weak); not a measured purge	6.166e-4	kilogram	assumed	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
Sour water, to the sour water stripper and wastewater treatment output:wastewater REF BREF section 3.13.2, p. 195 (50 to 110 l/t, midpoint, taken at 1 kg/l); high COD, H2S, NH3; its H2S and NH3 are not counted here (TODO)	0.08814	kilogram	calculated	3 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)

Elementary flows

Flow	Direction	Compartment	Amount	Unit	Provenance	Pedigree
Carbon dioxide, fossil 349b29d1-3e58-4c66-98b9-9d1a076efd2e	emission	air	0.04834	kilogram	calculated	3 4 5 3 3
Water 075e433b-4be4-448e-9510-9a5029c1ce94	emission	air	3.958e-5	cubic meter	calculated	3 4 5 3 3
Methane, fossil 0795345f-c7ae-410c-ad25-1845784c75f5	emission	air	8.814e-7	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4
Dinitrogen monoxide 20185046-64bb-4c09-a8e7-e8a9e144ca98	emission	air	8.814e-8	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/hydrocracking-1/lca/datasets/hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle.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
Hydrogen chemically consumed per t of fresh feed, vacuum gas oil hydrocracking No open per-mass range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF range (Table 3.62, 260 to 400 Nm3/t) is the dataset's own source. Per-barrel figures (US DOE 1998, Energetics, section 4.1.4: 1000 to 2500 scf/bbl) need a feed density to become kg/t, a modelling step. Searched: open reviews and course notes on VGO hydrocracking (only scf/bbl or single pilot-test values, e.g. Peng et al. 2018, Front. Chem. Sci. Eng. 12:867).	– kg/t	not available	not evaluated
Sour water per t of fresh feed, hydrocracking No open range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF range (section 3.13.2, 50 to 110 l/t) is the dataset's own source; no other open source read for this entry states a hydrocracker waste-water flow.	– kg/t	not available	not evaluated
Electricity per t of fresh feed, hydrocracking No open range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF range (Table 3.66, 20 to 150 kWh/t, after Sema, Sofres 1991 and VROM 1999) is the dataset's own source. Read and not usable: US DOE 1998 (Energetics, Table 4-8, per bbl), DOE 2006 Energy Bandwidth (no hydrocracking section), PRELIM v1.5 documentation (no values printed).	– kWh/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 hydrocracking-1:hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle:product:fuel-gas
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
process 7bffe138-3bbc-5c3a-9755-82b7c16fe4d2 (processes/7bffe138-3bbc-5c3a-9755-82b7c16fe4d2.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 hydrocracking-1:hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle · 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", "hydrocracking-1:hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle:product:fuel-gas"))

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

Refinery fuel gas, C1-C2 gas to the refinery fuel system (after amine treating), from Hydrocracking of vacuum gas oil, single-stage recycle (dataset hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity hydrocracking-1:hydrocracking-vgo-single-stage-recycle:product:fuel-gas. 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}
}