Bromine from bromide brine by chlorine oxidation and steaming-out (Smackover-type brine)
A hot Smackover-type brine (4 300 mg/kg bromide) is chlorinated and steam-stripped in a steaming-out tower; the bromine is condensed, separated from bromine water, freed of chlorine and dried with sulfuric acid; the tail brine is neutralised with lime and reinjected. Chlorine from chlor-alkali-1. Concept stage, 30 kt/a Br2, assumed basis.
Research outputNot engineering advice and not an approved design: do not use it for construction, operation or safety decisions. What this means
Overview
Brine from the brine field enters the top of a packed steaming-out tower at about 195 degF;
chlorine oxidises 95.5 % of its bromide to bromine and live LP steam strips the bromine
overhead. The overhead is condensed and decanted: the bromine water returns to the tower, the
crude bromine goes to a stripping column that returns its chlorine to the tower, and the
bromine is dried with 98 wt-% sulfuric acid. The chlorine beyond the bromide's demand is taken
by the brine's hydrogen sulfide (the representative side reaction); the acid it forms is
neutralised with lime before the tail brine is reinjected.
All values are concept estimates from an independent balance script, given to cheme as
assumed values; the brine, its temperatures, the recovery, the chlorine use and the steam use
are anchored on US 4 719 096 and the Arkansas Geological Survey. No ChemE-as-Code property
method covers this Ca/Na chloride brine with bromine, so energy closure in core is
not evaluable. See DESIGN.md of the engineering files for every assumption and gated step.
Capacity
3 750 kg/h dry bromine = 30 kt/a Br2 (ASSUMED)
Operation
8,000 h/a
Location
generic brine-field site on a Smackover-type brine (southern Arkansas basis), not chosen
Engineering gates
Concept and feasibility (no results yet)
Maintainers
Artur Schweidtmann
Design basis and assumptions (4)
D-001 boundary: brine at the fence (wells and pipeline outside) to dry bromine to storage, neutralised tail brine to reinjection (injection outside); no bromine derivatives
D-005 conversion model: 95.5 % of the bromide oxidised (reported tower performance), all H2S oxidised to sulfur as the side reaction that consumes the excess chlorine; no kinetics, no speciation
D-006 the balance is the independent script scripts/balance.py; brine water activity 0.75 and cp 2.9 kJ/kg K ASSUMED (no electrolyte package for this brine)
Construction, transport and end of life are outside the preliminary LCI (D-013)
Sulfuric acidFeedstockfeed:H2SO4: sulfuric acid 98 wt-% for bromine drying
Calcium hydroxideFeedstockfeed:LIME: hydrated lime for the tail brine neutralisation
WaterFeedstockStands for the aqueous bromide brine (feed:BRINE, 243 kg brine per kg Br2, 4 300 mg/kg bromide, 31 wt-% NaCl/CaCl2), which has no registry entry yet
Out
BromineMain productDry bromine, 99.96 wt-% Br2, to storage
WastewaterWasteNeutralised tail brine, 249 kg/kg Br2, reinjected into the brine formation (not a surface discharge). Spent sulfuric acid 80 % (product:SPACID, 2.6 g/kg) goes to treatment
Utilities:Steam (Live LP steam 350 kPa(a), 5.82 kg/kg Br2, injected into the steaming-out tower (condensate leaves with the tail brine); the C-104 reboiler takes 0.016 kWh/kg more (feed:LPH)), Electricity (0.032 kWh/kg Br2: brine feed pump and small drives (ASSUMED)), Cooling water (0.18 kWh/kg Br2 removed, 25/35 degC (ASSUMED): bromine condenser, C-104 condenser, bromine cooler)
Each reaction's page has the conversion, heat of reaction, catalyst and sources this process states, next to those of other processes with the same reaction. All reactions
Life cycle assessment
–kg CO2-eqPreliminarypartial, 10 data gaps
Climate change per 1 kg Bromine, dry (99.96 wt-% Br2), gate-to-gate
No factors. No contribution is characterised, so no factor stands behind any number.
Main contributors
Method and data
Goal
Preliminary gate-to-gate life cycle inventory of bromine (99.96 wt-% Br2) recovered from a Smackover-type bromide brine by chlorine oxidation and steaming-out, for the concept stage: the foreground exchanges of the balanced flowsheet per kg of bromine, ready to be linked to background datasets (chlor-alkali-1's chlorine first). No impact assessment is claimed.
Functional unit
1 kg Bromine, dry (99.96 wt-% Br2) (1 kg bromine)
Boundary
gate-to-gate
Characterisation
Factors kept with the process · GWP100
Data quality
No factors
Result
partial screening carbon footprint · 10 data gaps
Scenario
Climate change (kg CO2-eq)
baseline
no total (data gaps)
Inventory per 1 kg Bromine, dry (99.96 wt-% Br2) (11 flows)
Flow
Phase
Direction
Quantity
Unit
Provenance
Raw bromide brine from the brine field (Smackover-type, 195 degF)
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 3 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:BR2 100 %
Allocation findings
none
Change report
Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
KPI benchmark positions: not available (no benchmarked KPI for this process's datasets).
Maturity and review
Design maturity Concept (claimed): An idea or first flowsheet; numbers are rough. Concept PFD with closed mass, component and element balances on every block and step (cheme validate, cheme process streams, reaction extents). The stream values come from the independent script scripts/balance.py and are given to cheme as assumed values. Checks against the sources: chlorine 0.571 kg/kg Br2 (US 4 719 096: 0.55-0.60), tail brine bromide 189 mg/kg (50-200 ppm), recovery 1.73 lb Br2 per barrel (AGS: 1.5-1.8); the live steam from the script's tower energy balance, 5.82 kg/kg Br2, is 2 % above the 5.2-5.7 lb/lb that US 4 719 096 reports for conventional towers. cheme maturity: calculation maturity none (every stream value assumed from scripts/balance.py, reactors and separators specified); the concept claim, the lowest level the manifest offers, exceeds this evidence (cheme.maturity-claim-exceeds). Energy closure is not evaluable in core (no property package for the brine). The preliminary gate-to-gate LCI closes in mass and elements; every background is a gap. Not reviewed. Main products and feeds are listed under chemistry with their chemicals registry entries (issue #251).
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/bromine-1/checks/maturity.json(not in the library)
Bromine. Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, Wiley-VCH (route identity from issue #136; full text not read) · doi:10.1002/14356007.a04_391.pub2
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: "Bromine from bromide brine by chlorine oxidation and steaming-out (Smackover-type brine)", ChemE-as-Code process library, version c3ab348.
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, in preparation). ChemE-as-Code: An Open-Source Platform for AI-Accelerated Chemical Process Engineering (working title).
BibTeX
@unpublished{schweidtmann_cheme_as_code,
author = {Schweidtmann, Artur M.},
title = {{ChemE-as-Code: An Open-Source Platform for AI-Accelerated Chemical Process Engineering (working title)}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://cheme-as-code.org},
note = {in preparation}
}
