Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of 1,3-butadiene, with raffinate-1 and an acetylenes purge to fuel as co-products: a typical naphtha-cracker C4 cut, the licensor's recovery bound and IEA Western European energy averages. No flowsheet; not reviewed.
1,3-Butadiene by extractive distillation of a steam-cracker crude C4 cut
Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of 1,3-butadiene, with raffinate-1 and an acetylenes purge to fuel as co-products: a typical naphtha-cracker C4 cut, the licensor's recovery bound and IEA Western European energy averages. 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 1,3-butadiene (the dataset's basis); no plant size
What goes in and out
In
- Crude C4 cutFeedstocknaphtha-cracker C4 cut, 39.3 wt% butadiene (typical cut, ASSUMED); not linked to ethylene-1, whose ethane-cracker cut is another grade (lca/mappings.yaml)
Out
- 1,3-ButadieneMain product
- Raffinate-1 (C4 raffinate)Co-productraffinate-1: butenes, with the isobutene, and butanes
- C3 and C4 acetylenes purge of butadiene extractionCo-productC3 and C4 acetylenes with the unrecovered butadiene, to fuel use (ASSUMED fate)
- 1,3-ButadieneEmissionprocess vents and wastewater, US facility means of 1984
Utilities: Electricity, Steam (counted as heat delivered (final energy); pressure not stated by the source)
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 1,3-Butadiene, polymer grade Preliminary; Raffinate-1 (C4 raffinate), Raffinate-1 (butenes and butanes, with the isobutene) Preliminary; C3 and C4 acetylenes purge of butadiene extraction, C3 and C4 acetylenes and heavies purge, to fuel use (co-product) 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 1 unmapped exchange. 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 (deviation, from dataset) · product:butadiene 38.5 %, product:c4-purge 2.3 %, product:c4-raffinate 59.2 %
- Allocation findings
- none
- Change report
- Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
- Dataset pages
- 1,3-Butadiene, polymer grade Preliminary · C3 and C4 acetylenes purge of butadiene extraction, C3 and C4 acetylenes and heavies purge, to fuel use (co-product) Preliminary · Raffinate-1 (C4 raffinate), Raffinate-1 (butenes and butanes, with the isobutene) Preliminary
KPI benchmark positions
| KPI | Value | Reference range | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity per t of butadiene by C4 extraction | – kWh/t | 250 to 250 kWh/t | not evaluated |
| Steam (heat delivered) per t of butadiene by C4 extraction | – kWh/t | 1,786 to 1,786 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/butadiene-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
- Saygin, D., Patel, M.K., Tam, C., Gielen, D.J. (2009) Chemical and Petrochemical Sector: Potential of best practice technology and other measures for improving energy efficiency. IEA Information Paper, OECD/IEA, Paris (Tables 1 and 13)
- Neelis, M., Patel, M., Blok, K., Haije, W., Bach, P. (2007) Approximation of theoretical energy-saving potentials for the petrochemical industry using energy balances for 68 key processes. Energy 32:1104-1123 (Table A1) · doi:10.1016/j.energy.2006.08.005
- US EPA (1996) Locating and Estimating Air Emissions from Sources of 1,3-Butadiene, EPA-454/R-96-008 (section 4.1, Tables 4-3 and 4-5)
- BASF SE, Butadiene extraction technology (manufacturer web page; yield and purity)
- US DOE Office of Industrial Technologies (2000) Energy and Environmental Profile of the U.S. Chemical Industry, prepared by Energetics (route share, p. 34)
- US EPA (2025) Environmental Release and Occupational Exposure Assessment for 1,3-Butadiene, EPA-740-R-25-058 (section 3.1, process description)
- Falcke, H. et al. (2017) Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for the Production of Large Volume Organic Chemicals. JRC Science for Policy Report EUR 28882 EN (JRC109279), section 3.2.2.4 and Table 3.3 · doi:10.2760/77304
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: "1,3-Butadiene by extractive distillation of a steam-cracker crude C4 cut", 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}
}