Plastic pyrolysis gas, Pyrolysis gas not fired in the process, exported as fuel gas

Activity Raw pyrolysis oil by continuous thermal pyrolysis of mixed polyolefin plastic waste, RER: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedplastic-pyrolysis-1:plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins:product:plastic-pyrolysis-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 raw (not upgraded) pyrolysis oil, gate-to-gate, from pyrolysis-ready mixed PE/PP waste. Yield and process heat from a JRC review of EU literature and stakeholder data (2026), electricity from a survey of US companies (2017), combustion CH4 and N2O from IPCC 2006. Part of the gas is fired for the process heat; the rest is a co-product. Char is a residue.

Reference product: 1 kilogram of Plastic pyrolysis gas, Pyrolysis gas not fired in the process, exported as fuel gas
Chemical: plastic-pyrolysis-gas
CAS: not available
Code: plastic-pyrolysis-1:plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins:product:plastic-pyrolysis-gas
Dataset: plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins version 0.1.0 · UUID 876814ca-2325-5291-8b8b-4b8b224858f5
Activity UUID: not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database: cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)
Process: Raw pyrolysis oil by continuous thermal pyrolysis of mixed polyolefin plastic waste
Geography: RER · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period: 2016 · valid until 2030
Technology: non-catalytic (thermal) pyrolysis of mixed polyolefins at about 430 to 550 degC in continuously fed reactors (screw or rotary kiln, extruder-fed, fluidised bed); catalytic, hydrothermal and batch units are not modelled separately · level current
Boundary: gate-to-gate: pyrolysis reactor with its gas-fired heating, condensation and gas handling; the waste enters sorted and pretreated, burden-free; upgrading (hydrotreating, fractionation) and the steam cracker are outside
Classification: ISIC Rev.4 3830 (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, 16.1 % of the dataset to this product (rule physical-energy, from mappings)
The raw pyrolysis oil and the exported pyrolysis gas are co-produced fuels (the oil also a steam-cracker feed after upgrading), so energy content (LHV) is the physical relationship (hierarchy step 2). LHVs are IPCC 2006 category defaults, naphtha for the oil and ethane for the gas (ASSUMED match), given in the dataset; the char is a residue, not a co-product.
Rights: CC-BY-4.0

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Plastic pyrolysis gas, Pyrolysis gas not fired in the process, exported as fuel gas

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

Preliminary1 exchange is not yet linked to a background dataset. It counts no burden, so the inventory is incomplete: do not read a result from it as complete.

Input	Amount	Unit	Provenance	Pedigree	Linked to
Electricity feed:electricity Benavides, P.T., Sun, P., Han, J., Dunn, J.B., Wang, M. (2017) Life-cycle analysis of fuels from post-use non-recycled plastics, Fuel 203:11-22, doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2017.04.070 (accepted manuscript, OSTI 1353191), Table 1, p. 8: 87 % of 1775 MJ purchased energy per t of total liquid product, taken per t of raw oil (ASSUMED transfer: the figure includes on-site upgrading, so it is an upper view for raw oil) electricity	0.3751	kilowatt hour	given	3 4 4 4 4	market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Char and solid residue, to treatment output:pyrolysis-char closes the mass balance of the model compounds; modelled as carbon (ASSUMED; real char holds the feed's inorganics and fillers). Gives 8.85 % of the feed, against the 9 wt% median char of five US companies (Benavides, P.T., Sun, P., Han, J., Dunn, J.B., Wang, M. (2017) Life-cycle analysis of fuels from post-use non-recycled plastics, Fuel 203:11-22, doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2017.04.070 (accepted manuscript, OSTI 1353191), section 3.3, p. 10). TODO its fate: landfill (most common in that survey) or energy recovery	0.1121	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'pyrolysis-char'); 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	0.3493	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 4 4
Water 075e433b-4be4-448e-9510-9a5029c1ce94	emission	air	2.145e-4	cubic meter	calculated	4 4 4 4 4
Methane, fossil 0795345f-c7ae-410c-ad25-1845784c75f5	emission	air	5.537e-6	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4
Dinitrogen monoxide 20185046-64bb-4c09-a8e7-e8a9e144ca98	emission	air	5.537e-7	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/plastic-pyrolysis-1/lca/datasets/plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins.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
Pyrolysis liquid per mass of plastic waste fed to pyrolysis	– kg/kg	0.6 to 0.8 kg/kg Benavides, P.T., Sun, P., Han, J., Dunn, J.B., Wang, M. (2017) Life-cycle analysis of fuels from post-use non-recycled plastics. Fuel 203:11-22, doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2017.04.070 (accepted manuscript) (peer-reviewed)	not evaluated
Electricity per t of raw pyrolysis oil No second open figure found (2026-11-05). Read: JRC 2023 EUR 31423 (its pyrolysis inventories are confidential survey data, not published), JRC 2026 EUR 40766 (costs and yields, no electricity), Gracida-Alvarez et al. 2023, doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138867 (refers to ANL-22/37 for the energy data). Not readable: ANL-22/37 (OSTI 1885570 served a bot check) and Jeswani et al. 2021, doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144483 (HTTP 403). The dataset's value is Benavides et al. 2017, its own source.	– 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 plastic-pyrolysis-1:plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins:product:plastic-pyrolysis-gas
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
process 876814ca-2325-5291-8b8b-4b8b224858f5 (processes/876814ca-2325-5291-8b8b-4b8b224858f5.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 plastic-pyrolysis-1:plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins · 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", "plastic-pyrolysis-1:plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins:product:plastic-pyrolysis-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

Plastic pyrolysis gas, Pyrolysis gas not fired in the process, exported as fuel gas, from Raw pyrolysis oil by continuous thermal pyrolysis of mixed polyolefin plastic waste (dataset plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity plastic-pyrolysis-1:plastic-pyrolysis-mixed-polyolefins:product:plastic-pyrolysis-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}
}