Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of polymer-grade ethylene from bought bio-ethanol: the ethanol feed from a published simulation's yield, by-products from the stoichiometry of its eight reactions, utilities from the same study. No flowsheet; not reviewed.
Bio-ethylene by catalytic dehydration of ethanol (adiabatic fixed beds, steam dilution)
Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of polymer-grade ethylene from bought bio-ethanol: the ethanol feed from a published simulation's yield, by-products from the stoichiometry of its eight reactions, utilities from the same study. 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 ethylene (the dataset's basis); the source's plant makes 200 kt/a
What goes in and out
In
- EthanolFeedstockbought hydrated bio-ethanol (93 wt% in the source), counted as ethanol; not linked to ethanol-1, which makes synthetic ethanol from ethylene
- Sodium hydroxideReactantcaustic wash of the CO2, 50 wt% solution counted per kg of solution; linked to chlor-alkali-1 (lca/mappings.yaml)
Out
- EthyleneMain productpolymer grade, 99.95 vol%
- WastewaterWaste
Utilities: Steam (superheated at 11.4 bar, injected into the reactor feed 1:1 by weight; counted by mass), Electricity (simulated process units and cooling-water supply; refrigeration power not 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 Ethylene, polymer grade (99.95 vol%) 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 4 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:ethylene 100 %
- Allocation findings
- none
- Change report
- Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
- Dataset pages
- Ethylene, polymer grade (99.95 vol%) Preliminary
KPI benchmark positions
| KPI | Value | Reference range | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| External natural gas fired per t of bio-ethylene (fuel energy) | – kWh/t | 706 to 728 kWh/t | not evaluated |
| Electricity per t of bio-ethylene | – kWh/t | 353 to 397 kWh/t | not evaluated |
| Ethanol (counted as ethanol) per t of bio-ethylene | – t/t | 1.706 to 1.715 t/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/bio-ethylene-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
- Arvidsson, M., Lundin, B. (2011) Process integration study of a biorefinery producing ethylene from lignocellulosic feedstock for a chemical cluster. MSc thesis, Chalmers University of Technology
- Haro, P., Ollero, P., Trippe, F. (2013) Technoeconomic assessment of potential processes for bio-ethylene production. Fuel Processing Technology 114:35-48 (accepted manuscript, idus.us.es) · doi:10.1016/j.fuproc.2013.03.024
- IEA-ETSAP and IRENA (2013) Production of Bio-ethylene. Technology Brief I13
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: "Bio-ethylene by catalytic dehydration of ethanol (adiabatic fixed beds, steam dilution)", 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}
}