Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of liquid primary aluminium: alumina, net anode, aluminium fluoride and electricity as midpoints of EU NFM BREF ranges; anode CO2 and SO2 by mass balance, CF4 and C2F6 by the IPCC 2006 Tier 2 slope method. Anodes bought in, no casthouse. No flowsheet; not reviewed.
Primary aluminium by Hall-Heroult electrolysis with point-feed prebaked anodes
Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of liquid primary aluminium: alumina, net anode, aluminium fluoride and electricity as midpoints of EU NFM BREF ranges; anode CO2 and SO2 by mass balance, CF4 and C2F6 by the IPCC 2006 Tier 2 slope method. Anodes bought in, no casthouse. No flowsheet; not reviewed.
Research outputNot engineering advice and not an approved design: do not use it for construction, operation or safety decisions. What this means
Overview
- Capacity
- per tonne of liquid primary aluminium (the dataset's basis); no plant size
What goes in and out
In
- Aluminium oxideFeedstocksmelter-grade alumina; linked to alumina-1 (lca/mappings.yaml)
- Prebaked carbon anodeFeedstocknet consumption; the anode plant is not modelled
- Aluminium fluorideFeedstockbath make-up
- AirFeedstockfree; its O2 that burns the anode carbon beyond the electrolysis is feed:O2
Out
- AluminiumMain productliquid metal tapped from the pots, before casting
- Carbon dioxideEmissionprocess CO2 from the anode carbon
- Sulfur dioxideEmissionfrom the anode sulfur, no wet scrubber
- WastewaterWaste
Utilities: Electricity (potline total AC, rectifier losses and auxiliaries included)
Life cycle assessment
No footprint assessed yet; the process is part of the life-cycle inventory below.
In the open LCI database (cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4) as Primary aluminium, liquid, tapped from the pots Preliminary.
Download it for Brightway, openLCA and other tools.
In the LCI database: system model, datasets and KPIs against the benchmarks
In the LCI database
- Status
- Preliminary 5 unmapped exchanges. Some exchanges have no background mapping yet: they are exported unlinked and count no burden, so the inventory is incomplete.
- System model
- attributional, cut-off (methodology 1.1.0)
- Allocation
- mass (single-output, from default) · product:aluminium 100 %
- Allocation findings
- none
- Change report
- Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
- Dataset pages
- Primary aluminium, liquid, tapped from the pots Preliminary
KPI benchmark positions
| KPI | Value | Reference range | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PFC (CF4 and C2F6) to air per t of primary aluminium | – kg/t | 0.01 to 0.1 kg/t | not evaluated |
| Process CO2 from anode consumption per t of primary aluminium | – t/t | 1.44 to 1.76 t/t | not evaluated |
| SO2 to air per t of primary aluminium (no wet scrubbing) | – kg/t | 10 to 25 kg/t | not evaluated |
| Electricity per t of primary aluminium (potline, AC) | – kWh/t | 13,000 to 20,000 kWh/t | not evaluated |
Maturity and review
Design maturity Concept (claimed): An idea or first flowsheet; numbers are rough. No independent engineering review yet. Automated checks passing is not a review.
Calculation maturity, from the checked evidenceNot assessed
The process has no maturity report (cheme maturity, checks/maturity.json), so no calculation maturity is established.
No level shownThe design maturity (Concept) is the manifest's claim, not evidence. A level appears here once the process's repository holds a current report from
cheme maturity --write.Artifact completeness
Which deliverables exist. They never raise a calculation maturity level: a drawing from unchecked numbers is still unchecked.
Not reported without a maturity report.
Independent review
Not independently reviewed
No independent engineering review yet. Automated checks passing is not a review.
Set by people only. Reaching a calculation maturity level or passing automated checks is not an independent review or an approval.
Where the evidence comes from
- Report
processes/aluminium-1/checks/maturity.json(not in the library)- Method
- How ChemE-as-Code checks the levels (requirement by requirement)
Open items
0 open items · 0 closed
New action itemNew engineering holdNew technical queryNew design changeAll issues
Sources
- Library version
- a3c52e4 (process last changed in a3c52e4)
- Data
- Catalog record (JSON) · CC-BY-4.0
- Files
- View the files on GitHub · change history and authors
References
- Cusano, G. et al. (2017) Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for the Non-Ferrous Metals Industries. JRC Science for Policy Report EUR 28648 EN, sections 4.1.3 and 4.2.3 · doi:10.2760/8224
- IPCC (2006) 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Vol. 3 Industrial Processes and Product Use, ch. 4 Metal Industry Emissions, section 4.4 Primary aluminium production
- International Aluminium Institute (2022) Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Data and Environmental Metrics for the Primary Aluminium Industry, 2019 data: Technology Coverage (prebake share; route choice only, no value used)
- US DOE Industrial Technologies Program (2007) U.S. Energy Requirements for Aluminum Production: Historical Perspective, Theoretical Limits and Current Practices, section 5.2 (benchmark only)
How to cite
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).
For this process: "Primary aluminium by Hall-Heroult electrolysis with point-feed prebaked anodes", ChemE-as-Code process library, version a3c52e4.
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}
}