Phosphoric acid by the wet dihydrate process (merchant grade, from phosphate rock and sulfuric acid)

Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of merchant-grade acid (54 % P2O5): rock, sulfuric acid and phosphogypsum from the stoichiometry of a model Moroccan rock with the BREF's dihydrate P2O5 efficiency; power, steam, water and fluosilicic acid from EFMA ranges. No flowsheet; not reviewed.

Calculation maturity: not assessedDesign maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedPhosphoric acidReport a problem with this process
Research outputNot engineering advice and not an approved design: do not use it for construction, operation or safety decisions. What this means

Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of merchant-grade acid (54 % P2O5): rock, sulfuric acid and phosphogypsum from the stoichiometry of a model Moroccan rock with the BREF's dihydrate P2O5 efficiency; power, steam, water and fluosilicic acid from EFMA ranges. No flowsheet; not reviewed.

Capacity
per tonne of merchant-grade acid (the dataset's basis); no plant size

What goes in and out

In

  • Phosphate rockFeedstockmodelled on the Moroccan (Khouribga) analysis of the LVIC-AAF BREF, 33.6 % P2O5
  • Sulfuric acidReactant98.5 wt%, counted by mass of the acid as sulfuric-acid-1 makes it
  • WaterFeedstockprocess water, scrubber water not included

Out

Utilities: Electricity, Steam (by mass, for acid concentration; pressure not stated by the source)

Show in the process graph

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 Phosphoric acid, merchant grade (53.97 wt% P2O5), wet process Preliminary; Fluosilicic acid (hexafluorosilicic acid), Fluosilicic acid, by-product (counted as 100 % H2SiF6) 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 (deviation, from dataset) · product:fluosilicic-acid 1.3 %, product:phosphoric-acid 98.7 %
Allocation findings
none
Change report
Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
Dataset pages
Fluosilicic acid (hexafluorosilicic acid), Fluosilicic acid, by-product (counted as 100 % H2SiF6) Preliminary · Phosphoric acid, merchant grade (53.97 wt% P2O5), wet process Preliminary

KPI benchmark positions

KPIValueReference rangePosition
Fluoride to air (as F) per t of P2O5 produced– g/t2.3 to 2.3 g/t
US EPA (1993, reformatted 1995) Compilation of Air Pollutant Emission Factors (AP-42), Fifth Edition, Volume I, Chapter 8: Inorganic Chemical Industry, Section 8.9 Phosphoric Acid (government)
not evaluated
Phosphogypsum generated per t of P2O5 produced– t/t4 to 5 t/t
European Commission, JRC/EIPPCB (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques for the Manufacture of Large Volume Inorganic Chemicals - Ammonia, Acids and Fertilisers (LVIC-AAF BREF), adopted August 2007 (bref)
not evaluated
Electricity per t of P2O5 produced– kWh/t170 to 180 kWh/t
European Commission, JRC/EIPPCB (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques for the Manufacture of Large Volume Inorganic Chemicals - Ammonia, Acids and Fertilisers (LVIC-AAF BREF), adopted August 2007 (bref)
not evaluated
Phosphate rock consumption per t of P2O5 produced– t/t2.6 to 3.5 t/t
EFMA (2000) Best Available Techniques for Pollution Prevention and Control in the European Fertilizer Industry, Booklet No. 4 of 8: Production of Phosphoric Acid. European Fertilizer Manufacturers' Association (now Fertilizers Europe), Brussels (other)
not evaluated
Steam per t of P2O5 produced (concentrated)– t/t1.9 to 2.4 t/t
European Commission, JRC/EIPPCB (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques for the Manufacture of Large Volume Inorganic Chemicals - Ammonia, Acids and Fertilisers (LVIC-AAF BREF), adopted August 2007 (bref)
not evaluated
Sulfuric acid (as 100 % H2SO4) per t of P2O5 produced– t/t2.4 to 2.9 t/t
European Commission, JRC/EIPPCB (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques for the Manufacture of Large Volume Inorganic Chemicals - Ammonia, Acids and Fertilisers (LVIC-AAF BREF), adopted August 2007 (bref)
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/phosphoric-acid-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

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: "Phosphoric acid by the wet dihydrate process (merchant grade, from phosphate rock and sulfuric acid)", 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}
}