Atmospheric residue (above 360 degC, to the vacuum unit)

Activity Crude oil distillation, atmospheric and vacuum (crude and high vacuum units), RER: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedrefinery-distillation-1:crude-atmospheric-distillation:product:atmospheric-residuePreliminaryReport 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 desalted crude oil, gate-to-gate, crude distillation unit (CDU) with side strippers. Cut yields of one medium North Sea crude at the REF BREF's cut points; utilities as midpoints of the REF BREF's ranges; furnace CO2, CH4 and N2O from IPCC defaults. Unallocated: all cuts are co-products.

Reference product: 1 kilogram of Atmospheric residue (above 360 degC, to the vacuum unit)
Chemical: atmospheric-residue
CAS: not available
Code: refinery-distillation-1:crude-atmospheric-distillation:product:atmospheric-residue
Dataset: crude-atmospheric-distillation version 0.1.0 · UUID 0d4d6ddb-1be7-5599-a036-73edd76f2fec
Activity UUID: not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database: cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)
Process: Crude oil distillation, atmospheric and vacuum (crude and high vacuum units)
Geography: RER · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period: 1999 · valid until 2006
Technology: atmospheric crude distillation at 0.5 to 1 barg with steam stripping (REF BREF 2.19); one crude assay · level current
Boundary: gate-to-gate: preheat furnace, atmospheric column, side strippers, overhead condensing; desalting, naphtha stabilisation and sour water stripping are outside; steam and power from 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, 50.6 % of the dataset to this product (rule physical-energy, from mappings)
The cuts of the crude and vacuum units are co-produced fuels and refinery feedstocks, so energy content (LHV) is the physical relationship (hierarchy step 2). The LHVs are IPCC 2006 category defaults per cut, given in each dataset (not measured values of these cuts).
Rights: CC-BY-4.0

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Atmospheric residue (above 360 degC, to the vacuum unit)

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 8 given, 8 calculated. Pedigree scores (1 best, 5 worst): reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, geographical correlation, further technological correlation.

Preliminary3 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
Crude oil, desalted (Johan Sverdrup type, 28.7 API, 0.81 wt% S) feed:crude-oil the basis; the crude type is the assay's (ASSUMED representative)	0.9618	kilogram	given	none	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'crude-oil'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Stripping steam (pressure not stated) feed:steam EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, Barthe et al., EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, section 3.19, Table 3.77, p. 207 (sources VROM 1999, Canales 2000, TWG 2001)	0.02645	kilogram	given	3 4 5 3 3	Atlas: steam, saturated, 11 bar(a), per kg, as heat from steam (Atlas unit proxy) (steam, saturated, 11 bar(a), GLO)
Water carried with the desalted crude (residual desalter water) feed:water EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, section 3.19, p. 208 (0.5 % water on crude in the overhead reflux drum); counted on top of the 1 t of dry crude whose TBP yields the cuts follow (ASSUMED)	0.004809	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4	market for water, deionised (water, deionised, RoW) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Electricity feed:electricity EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, Barthe et al., EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, section 3.19, Table 3.77, p. 207 (sources VROM 1999, Canales 2000, TWG 2001) electricity	0.004809	kilowatt hour	given	3 4 5 3 3	market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Refinery fuel gas fired in the crude unit furnace (LHV) feed:fuel EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, Barthe et al., EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, section 3.19, Table 3.77, p. 207 (sources VROM 1999, Canales 2000, TWG 2001); the source gives MJ/t, converted at 3.6 MJ/kWh fuel	0.1443	kilowatt hour	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
Sour water to stripping and wastewater treatment output:wastewater EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, section 3.19, p. 208: the overhead reflux drum's sour water, the water carried with the crude plus the stripping steam (see parameter ww_a); contains oil, H2S, NH3, chlorides, phenol; sour water stripping not counted	0.03126	kilogram	given	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)
Heat rejected to cooling water output:cooling-water EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, Barthe et al., EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, section 3.19, Table 3.77, p. 207 (sources VROM 1999, Canales 2000, TWG 2001): m3 per t at 17 K, times cp (ASSUMED)	0.07594	kilowatt hour	calculated	3 4 5 3 3	Atlas (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; system model cutoff (one database); allocation mass (single-output); boundary plant gate of a site utility: no utility market yet (docs/markets.md)
Column clean-out sludge (oily solids) to hazardous waste treatment output:sludge EU JRC (2015) REF BREF, Barthe et al., EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758, section 3.19, p. 208; composition not stated (oil, water and the crude's solids), so outside the element balance. TODO its treatment route	5.306e-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

Elementary flows

Flow	Direction	Compartment	Amount	Unit	Provenance	Pedigree
Carbon dioxide, fossil 349b29d1-3e58-4c66-98b9-9d1a076efd2e	emission	air	0.02991	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 3 4
Methane, fossil 0795345f-c7ae-410c-ad25-1845784c75f5	emission	air	5.194e-7	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 3 4
Dinitrogen monoxide 20185046-64bb-4c09-a8e7-e8a9e144ca98	emission	air	5.194e-8	kilogram	calculated	4 4 4 3 4
Nitrogen oxides c1b91234-6f24-417b-8309-46111d09c457	emission	air	1.136e-5	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 3
Sulfur dioxide fd7aa71c-508c-480d-81a6-8052aad92646	emission	air	3.982e-6	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 3
Carbon monoxide, fossil ba2f3f82-c93a-47a5-822a-37ec97495275	emission	air	1.136e-5	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 3
Particulate Matter, < 2.5 um 21e46cb8-6233-4c99-bac3-c41d2ab99498	emission	air	5.655e-7	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 3
NMVOC, non-methane volatile organic compounds d3260d0e-8203-4cbb-a45a-6a13131a5108	emission	air	1.077e-5	kilogram	given	4 4 4 4 4

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/refinery-distillation-1/lca/datasets/crude-atmospheric-distillation.yaml in library version a3c52e4.

Used by

Vacuum gas oil (360 to 560 degC, light and heavy) refinery-distillation-1:atmospheric-residue-vacuum-distillation:product:vacuum-gas-oil
Vacuum residue (above 560 degC) refinery-distillation-1:atmospheric-residue-vacuum-distillation:product:vacuum-residue

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
Furnace fuel and electricity per t of crude oil, atmospheric unit No open per-tonne range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF ranges (Table 3.77) are the dataset's own source. US DOE (2007, Table 2-2) states 82 to 186 thousand Btu per barrel; per tonne it needs a crude density, a modelling step (file comment).	– kWh/t	not available	not evaluated
Direct CO2 per t of crude oil, atmospheric unit	– kg/t	26 to 26 kg/t Barthe, P., Chaugny, M., Roudier, S., Delgado Sancho, L. (2015) Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for the Refining of Mineral Oil and Gas. JRC Science and Policy Report EUR 27140 EN, doi:10.2791/010758 (bref)	not evaluated
Electricity per t of crude oil, atmospheric unit No open per-tonne range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF range (Table 3.77, 4 to 6 kWh/t) is the dataset's own source; US DOE (2007, Table 3-5) gives one value per barrel (2.3 thousand Btu/bbl).	– kWh/t	not available	not evaluated
Furnace fuel (LHV) per t of crude oil, atmospheric unit No open range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF range (Table 3.77, 400 to 680 MJ/t) is the dataset's own source. US DOE (2007) gives fuel and power together per barrel only.	– 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 refinery-distillation-1:crude-atmospheric-distillation:product:atmospheric-residue
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
process 0d4d6ddb-1be7-5599-a036-73edd76f2fec (processes/0d4d6ddb-1be7-5599-a036-73edd76f2fec.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 refinery-distillation-1:crude-atmospheric-distillation · 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", "refinery-distillation-1:crude-atmospheric-distillation:product:atmospheric-residue"))

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

Atmospheric residue (above 360 degC, to the vacuum unit), from Crude oil distillation, atmospheric and vacuum (crude and high vacuum units) (dataset crude-atmospheric-distillation 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity refinery-distillation-1:crude-atmospheric-distillation:product:atmospheric-residue. 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}
}