Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of fresh feed: yields from a worked example of published FCC correlations, utilities and regenerator emissions as midpoints of EU REF BREF ranges, coke-burn CO2 from the coke's carbon, CH4 and N2O from IPCC defaults. Five co-products, unallocated. No flowsheet; not reviewed.
Fluid catalytic cracking of vacuum gas oil (full-combustion regenerator)
Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of fresh feed: yields from a worked example of published FCC correlations, utilities and regenerator emissions as midpoints of EU REF BREF ranges, coke-burn CO2 from the coke's carbon, CH4 and N2O from IPCC defaults. Five co-products, unallocated. 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 fresh feed (the dataset's basis); no plant size
What goes in and out
In
- Vacuum gas oilFeedstock
- AirFeedstockregenerator air, free; the oxygen burnt with the coke is feed:O2
Out
- FCC gasoline (cracked naphtha)Main product
- Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)Co-productolefinic C3/C4 cut; about 23 wt% propylene, not split off here
- Refinery fuel gasCo-productC2 and lighter, with the H2S
- Light cycle oilCo-product
- Heavy cycle oil and slurry oilCo-productmain fractionator bottoms (heavy cycle oil and slurry)
- Carbon dioxideEmissioncoke burn in the regenerator, the unit's direct CO2
- Carbon monoxideEmission
- WaterEmissionwater vapour of the coke burn
- Sulfur dioxideEmissionSOx as SO2
- WastewaterWastesour water
Utilities: Electricity, Steam (gross, pressure not stated by the source; the steam the unit raises is not credited), Cooling water
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 FCC gasoline (cracked naphtha), FCC gasoline (C5+, cracked naphtha) Preliminary; Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), FCC C3/C4 cut (LPG, olefinic; propylene not split off) Preliminary; FCC dry gas (H2, C1, C2, with the H2S), to the refinery fuel gas system Preliminary; Light cycle oil (LCO) Preliminary; Heavy cycle oil and slurry oil, Heavy cycle oil and slurry (main fractionator bottoms) 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 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
- energy (physical-energy, from mappings) · product:dry-gas 5.8 %, product:gasoline 49.4 %, product:heavy-cycle-oil 7.4 %, product:light-cycle-oil 21.1 %, product:lpg 16.3 %
- Allocation findings
- none
- Change report
- Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
- Dataset pages
- FCC dry gas (H2, C1, C2, with the H2S), to the refinery fuel gas system Preliminary · FCC gasoline (cracked naphtha), FCC gasoline (C5+, cracked naphtha) Preliminary · Heavy cycle oil and slurry oil, Heavy cycle oil and slurry (main fractionator bottoms) Preliminary · Light cycle oil (LCO) Preliminary · Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), FCC C3/C4 cut (LPG, olefinic; propylene not split off) Preliminary
KPI benchmark positions
| KPI | Value | Reference range | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liquid products (C3/C4 cut, gasoline, light and heavy cycle oil) per mass of FCC fresh feed No open range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). Jechura (2019, CBEN 409 course notes, Colorado School of Mines, slide 15) says mass liquid yields are usually 90 to 93 %, but the dataset's dry-gas and coke yields, which fix its liquid yield, come from the worked example of the same notes (slide 16). The REF BREF gives no FCC yield range. | – kg/kg | not available | not evaluated |
| CO2 from the regenerator per t of FCC fresh feed | – kg/t | 160 to 220 kg/t | not evaluated |
| Electricity per t of FCC fresh feed No open per-tonne range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF range (Table 3.33, 8 to 50 kWh/t for FCC) is the dataset's own source; US DOE (2007, Table 4-9) and PRELIM v1.0 give figures per barrel (file comment). | – kWh/t | not available | not evaluated |
| Particulates from the regenerator per t of FCC fresh feed No open range independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The REF BREF's sample of 20 EU FCC units (Table 3.37, 0.015 to 0.100 kg/t, average 0.040) is the dataset's own source. | – kg/t | not available | 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/fcc-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
- 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, sections 2.5 and 3.5, Tables 3.33 to 3.37 and 3.54 · doi:10.2791/010758
- Jechura, J. (2019) Catalytic Cracking, CBEN 409 Petroleum Refining Processes course notes, Colorado School of Mines, slides 15, 16 and 27
- Abella, J.P., Motazedi, K., Bergerson, J.A. (2015) Petroleum Refinery Life Cycle Inventory Model (PRELIM) v1.0, user guide and technical documentation, University of Calgary, Table 8 (p. 53)
- IPCC (2006) 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Vol. 2 Energy, ch. 1 (Tables 1.1, 1.2) and ch. 2 (Table 2.2)
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: "Fluid catalytic cracking of vacuum gas oil (full-combustion regenerator)", 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}
}