Hydrogen product 99.9 mol% to battery limit

Activity Hydrogen by natural-gas steam methane reforming with PSA (100 000 Nm3/h, steam export), GLO: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedhydrogen-1:hydrogen-by-steam-methane-reforming-100-000-nm3-h-psa-steam-export:product:H2Report 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

Unallocated foreground LCI of Hydrogen by steam methane reforming (100 000 Nm3/h, PSA, steam export), case design, derived from the flowsheet by cheme assess lca.

Reference product
1 kilogram of Hydrogen product 99.9 mol% to battery limit (28.5 bar(a), 40 degC, 99.8996 % H2 (mole))
Chemical
hydrogen
CAS
1333-74-0
Code
hydrogen-1:hydrogen-by-steam-methane-reforming-100-000-nm3-h-psa-steam-export:product:H2
Dataset
hydrogen-by-steam-methane-reforming-100-000-nm3-h-psa-steam-export version 0.1.0 · UUID 77419871-8deb-597d-a41b-2c2d464802e7
Activity UUID
not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348 (version preview-c3ab348)
Process
Hydrogen by natural-gas steam methane reforming with PSA (100 000 Nm3/h, steam export)
Geography
GLO · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period
2026 · valid until 2031
Technology
natural-gas steam methane reforming, top-fired tubular reformer, HT shift, hydrogen PSA, tail gas firing, steam export; 100 000 Nm3/h · level current
Boundary
gate-to-gate foreground of the plant
Production volume
76,252,596 kg/a (product:H2 per hour x operation.hours_per_year (8400 h/a))
Classification
ISIC Rev.4 2011 (taxonomy/families.yaml (ISIC Rev.4) of the process's families)
CPC 34210 · HS 2804.10 (chemicals/chemicals.yaml (hydrogen))
System model
attributional, cut-off (docs/system-model.md, methodology 1.1.0)
Allocation
exergy, 90.1 % of the dataset to this product (rule deviation, from study)
Hydrogen and steam are not products of one separation, so neither curated physical rule of the hierarchy fits exactly, and the WBCSD price ratio is not available (no sourced prices at concept). Exergy is chosen because the library allocates exported steam by energy or exergy and steam has no heating value; it weighs the steam by its work potential rather than by its enthalpy (DESIGN.md D-013).
Rights
CC-BY-4.0: the ChemE-as-Code process library's own concept design (LICENSE-DATA)

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Hydrogen product 99.9 mol% to battery limit

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 12 assumed, 1 calculated, 2 estimated. Pedigree scores (1 best, 5 worst): reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, geographical correlation, further technological correlation.

InputAmountUnitProvenancePedigreeLinked to
Natural gas feedstock
feed:NG
Natural gas feedstock (S1), high pressure, at the plant gate: connect to a market for natural gas, high pressure, of the site's country (extraction, processing, long-distance transport, including methane leakage upstream). Its carbon is the feedstock (process) CO2 of product:FLUE.
From stream S1
2.909kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3Atlas: natural gas, per kg, as methane (Atlas unit proxy) (natural gas, by mass, GLO)
Natural gas trim fuel
feed:NGF
Natural gas trim fuel (S20), the same supply as feed:NG: connect to the same market for natural gas, high pressure; its combustion emissions are in product:FLUE (the trim-fuel carbon is the combustion CO2), so link the supply only, not a 'heat from natural gas' activity (that would count the combustion twice).
From stream S20
0.5578kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3Atlas: natural gas, per kg, as methane (Atlas unit proxy) (natural gas, by mass, GLO)
Demineralised make-up water
feed:DMW
Demineralised water (S27, boiler feed make-up): connect to water, deionised / completely softened, at the user (the water treatment plant's chemicals, energy and the raw water withdrawn as a resource).
From stream S27
14.15kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3market for water, deionised (water, deionised, RoW) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Electric power
feed:POWER
Electricity for the fans K-301 and K-302, the boiler feed water pump P-401 and the recycle compressor K-101 (Q1, Q10-Q12): connect to a market for electricity, medium voltage, of the site's country.
electricity
From streams Q1, Q10, Q11, Q12
0.1475kilowatt hourassumed4 4 1 5 3market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Boiler blowdown
product:BD
Boiler blowdown (S34), water with the boiler's dissolved solids and conditioning chemicals (not modelled): connect to treatment of wastewater, average, at a municipal or industrial treatment plant (or the site's own effluent treatment).
From stream S34
0.1902kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3market for water, deionised (water, deionised, RoW) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Cooling water return
product:CW
Heat rejected to the site cooling water system (Q9, E-202, 298/308 K): connect to cooling water supply / heat rejection in an evaporative cooling tower (pumping and fan electricity, make-up water withdrawn and evaporated, blowdown, treatment chemicals), per kWh of heat removed.
cold, 25 degC
From stream Q9
3.082kilowatt hourcalculated3 4 1 5 3Atlas (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, 25 degC 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)

Elementary flows

FlowDirectionCompartmentAmountUnitProvenancePedigree
Ethane
8e30c990-5ed4-4f94-9d0e-2f5e4ff1a1f9
From streams S26, S35
emissionair0kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3
Propane
3a6c936c-0276-4f11-9d98-1bd011387a6e
From streams S26, S35
emissionair0kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3
Methane, fossil
70ef743b-3ed5-4a6d-b192-fb6d62378555
From streams S26, S35
emissionair / non-urban air or from high stacks7.834e-5kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3
Carbon monoxide, fossil
099b36ab-4c03-4587-87f4-2f81e337afb8
From streams S26, S35
emissionair / non-urban air or from high stacks0.002271kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3
Carbon dioxide, fossil
aa7cac3a-3625-41d4-bc54-33e2cf11ec46
From streams S26, S35
emissionair / non-urban air or from high stacks9.133kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3
Hydrogen
no biosphere3 UUID: linked by name and compartment
From streams S26, S35
emissionair6.437e-6kilogramassumed4 4 1 5 3
Water
09872080-d143-4fb1-a3a5-647b077107ff
From streams S26, S35
emissionair / non-urban air or from high stacks0.003688cubic meterassumed4 4 1 5 3
Dinitrogen monoxide
afd6d670-bbb0-4625-9730-04088a5b035e
emissionair / non-urban air or from high stacks7.826e-6kilogramestimated3 4 3 5 3
Nitrogen oxides
77357947-ccc5-438e-9996-95e65e1e1bce
emissionair / non-urban air or from high stacks0.005792kilogramestimated3 4 3 5 3

The streams are the plant's own flows: an amount here is allocated and per 1 kilogram of Hydrogen product 99.9 mol% to battery limit, 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/hydrogen-1/lca/dataset.yaml in library version c3ab348.

Used by

How good it is

Review
Not reviewed: no LCI review record yet
Data quality
DQR 3 · PEF-style DQR 3.25
TeR 3 · GeR 5 · TiR 1.0005 · P 4 · C 4 · weakest GeR · 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 hydrogen-1:hydrogen-by-steam-methane-reforming-100-000-nm3-h-psa-steam-export:product:H2
  • cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
    process 77419871-8deb-597d-a41b-2c2d464802e7 (processes/77419871-8deb-597d-a41b-2c2d464802e7.json) · the dataset's unallocated multi-output process; this product's allocation factor is in it
  • 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 hydrogen-1:hydrogen-by-steam-methane-reforming-100-000-nm3-h-psa-steam-export · 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-c3ab348.xlsx", background="ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff", location="DE")
activity = bd.get_activity(("cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-c3ab348", "hydrogen-1:hydrogen-by-steam-methane-reforming-100-000-nm3-h-psa-steam-export:product:H2"))

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 product 99.9 mol% to battery limit, from Hydrogen by natural-gas steam methane reforming with PSA (100 000 Nm3/h, steam export) (dataset hydrogen-by-steam-methane-reforming-100-000-nm3-h-psa-steam-export 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-c3ab348, activity hydrogen-1:hydrogen-by-steam-methane-reforming-100-000-nm3-h-psa-steam-export:product:H2. 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}
}