Polyethylene terephthalate resin, bottle grade (melt phase and SSP)

Activity Polyethylene terephthalate by continuous PTA esterification, melt polycondensation and SSP, GLO: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedpet-1:pet-pta-continuous-ssp:product:petPreliminaryReport 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 bottle-grade PET resin, gate-to-gate. Feeds from stoichiometry with sourced losses (POL BREF ranges); electricity, natural gas and water from a US industry average of 2015 (NAPCOR 2020); air emissions, wastes and effluent COD from the POL BREF.

Reference product: 1 kilogram of Polyethylene terephthalate resin, bottle grade (melt phase and SSP)
Chemical: polyethylene-terephthalate
CAS: 25038-59-9
Code: pet-1:pet-pta-continuous-ssp:product:pet
Dataset: pet-pta-continuous-ssp version 0.1.0 · UUID e3cdff86-dd7f-554d-8162-5db5885f3ea6
Activity UUID: not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database: cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)
Process: Polyethylene terephthalate by continuous PTA esterification, melt polycondensation and SSP
Geography: GLO · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period: 2004 · valid until 2020
Technology: continuous direct esterification of PTA with MEG and continuous melt polycondensation with antimony catalyst, then continuous solid-state polycondensation; the DMT routes and batch units are not modelled · level current
Boundary: gate-to-gate: paste preparation, esterification, prepolycondensation, melt polycondensation, chip cutting, crystallisation and solid-state polycondensation, glycol recovery, heat-transfer-medium heaters; PTA, MEG and power from outside
Classification: ISIC Rev.4 2013 (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 Polyethylene terephthalate resin, bottle grade (melt phase and SSP)

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 4 calculated, 10 given, 3 assumed. Pedigree scores (1 best, 5 worst): reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, geographical correlation, further technological correlation.

Preliminary8 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
Purified terephthalic acid (PTA) feed:terephthalic-acid stoichiometry C8H6O4 + C2H6O2 -> C10H8O4 + 2 H2O for the resin and the polymer waste, less the isophthalic share; compare 0.825 to 0.87 t of DMT or TPA per t (POL BREF Table 10.4, benchmarks/polymers.yaml)	0.8502	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4	Atlas (pinned): Purified terephthalic acid by air oxidation of p-xylene in acetic acid and hydropurification (Purified terephthalic acid, GLO) compatible: grade the input names terephthalic-acid only; terephthalic-acid (Purified terephthalic acid) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation mass (single-output); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Isophthalic acid (comonomer) feed:isophthalic-acid the isophthalic share of the diacids (NAPCOR 2020, Table 36), in place of terephthalic acid	0.02273	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'isophthalic-acid'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Monoethylene glycol feed:ethylene-glycol stoichiometry plus the glycol lost to the effluent (as COD), to air and as acetaldehyde; compare 0.32 to 0.355 t/t (POL BREF Table 10.4, benchmarks/polymers.yaml) and 0.345 t/t (NAPCOR 2020, Table 36)	0.3337	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4	Atlas (pinned): Ethylene glycol by ethylene oxide hydration (glycols-only EO/EG plant, 1200 t/d MEG) (Ethylene glycol (monoethylene glycol), Monoethylene glycol to storage, GLO) compatible: grade the input names ethylene-glycol only; ethylene-glycol (Ethylene glycol (monoethylene glycol), Monoethylene glycol to storage) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation mass (deviation); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Natural gas (as methane) to the heat-transfer-medium heaters feed:natural-gas NAPCOR 2020, Table 36, p. 92 (62.0 m3/t), converted to mass at the ASSUMED reference state (parameter rho_ng) fuel, LHV 50.01 MJ/kg	0.04199	kilogram	given	3 4 4 3 3	Atlas: natural gas, per kg, as methane (Atlas unit proxy) (natural gas, by mass, GLO)
Electricity feed:electricity Franklin Associates (2020) Cradle-to-resin life cycle analysis of polyethylene terephthalate resin, prepared for NAPCOR, revised 3.2.20, Table 36, p. 92 electricity	0.23	kilowatt hour	given	3 4 4 3 3	market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Water consumed (withdrawn and not returned) feed:water Franklin Associates (2020) Cradle-to-resin life cycle analysis of polyethylene terephthalate resin, prepared for NAPCOR, revised 3.2.20, Table 36, p. 93; its fate (mostly evaporation) is not inventoried, so it is outside the element balance	0.73	kilogram	given	3 4 4 3 3	market for water, deionised (water, deionised, RoW) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Polycondensation catalyst (antimony compounds) input:catalyst EU JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007, Table 10.4, p. 170; stays in the polymer (no spent catalyst); mass outside the element balance. Antimony is a never-cut metal (system-model section 4)	4.425e-4	kilogram	given	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
Phosphorus stabiliser (e.g. polyphosphoric acid) input:stabiliser EU JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007, Table 10.4, p. 170; mass outside the element balance	5e-5	kilogram	given	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
Polymer waste (off-grade PET and lumps) output:polymer-waste EU JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007, Tables 10.4 and 10.5, pp. 170-171; modelled as PET of the product's composition (ASSUMED). For comparison, NAPCOR 2020 (pp. 90-91 and Table 36, p. 93) has off-spec resin below 1 % of output as a coproduct and about 1.9 kg/t of solid waste in all, so the US plants report less than this midpoint	0.009737	kilogram	given	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
Reaction water to wastewater treatment output:wastewater the esterification and polycondensation water of the stoichiometry, plus the water of the acetaldehyde reaction. Steam-ejector condensate and other effluent water are not counted (TODO)	0.1893	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4	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)
Organics in the effluent, as ethylene glycol, to wastewater treatment output:effluent-organics EU JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007, Table 10.4, p. 170 (COD before treatment, 2 to 16 kg/t), and Table 10.5, p. 171 (SSP, up to 0.663 kg/t); all of it read as ethylene glycol (ASSUMED)	0.007498	kilogram	assumed	4 4 4 4 4	Atlas: wastewater to treatment, per kg (Atlas unit proxy) (wastewater, by mass, GLO)
Other waste (composition not stated) output:other-waste EU JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007, Table 10.4, p. 170; mass outside the element balance, and not drawn from the feeds in this model	0.0035	kilogram	given	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
Hazardous waste output:hazardous-waste EU JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007, Table 10.4, p. 170 (upper bound); mass outside the element balance. NAPCOR 2020 Table 36 (p. 93) reports 4.8 g/t of hazardous waste to incineration for the US plants, about ten times this bound	4.5e-7	kilogram	given	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	0.1152	kilogram	assumed	3 4 4 3 3
Water 075e433b-4be4-448e-9510-9a5029c1ce94	emission	air	9.429e-5	cubic meter	assumed	3 4 4 3 3
Acetaldehyde to air emission:CH3CHO unlinked unlinked, no biosphere mapping: emission of CH3CHO (literature) has no biosphere3 flow identity and is not in lci/mappings.yaml biosphere	emission	not linked	6e-5	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4
Ethylene glycol to air emission:C2H6O2 unlinked unlinked, no biosphere mapping: emission of C2H6O2 (literature) has no biosphere3 flow identity and is not in lci/mappings.yaml biosphere	emission	not linked	1e-5	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/pet-1/lca/datasets/pet-pta-continuous-ssp.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
Terephthalic (and isophthalic) acid per t of PET	– t/t	0.825 to 0.87 t/t European Commission JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007 (bref)	not evaluated
Electricity per t of PET	– kWh/t	194.4 to 222.2 kWh/t Saygin, D., Patel, M.K., Tam, C., Gielen, D.J. (2009) Chemical and Petrochemical Sector: Potential of best practice technology and other measures for improving energy efficiency. IEA Information Paper, OECD/IEA, Paris (iea)	not evaluated
Ethylene glycol per t of PET	– t/t	0.32 to 0.355 t/t European Commission JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007 (bref)	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 pet-1:pet-pta-continuous-ssp:product:pet
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
process e3cdff86-dd7f-554d-8162-5db5885f3ea6 (processes/e3cdff86-dd7f-554d-8162-5db5885f3ea6.json)
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 pet-1:pet-pta-continuous-ssp:product:pet
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", "pet-1:pet-pta-continuous-ssp:product:pet"))

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

Polyethylene terephthalate resin, bottle grade (melt phase and SSP), from Polyethylene terephthalate by continuous PTA esterification, melt polycondensation and SSP (dataset pet-pta-continuous-ssp 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity pet-1:pet-pta-continuous-ssp:product:pet. 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}
}