Phthalimide by continuous reaction of molten phthalic anhydride with ammonia

Tier 0 screening per tonne of phthalimide: stoichiometry with a BASF patent's yield and ammonia ratio (ejector and tube reactor, continuous), electricity and heat from core's defaults. Phthalic anhydride is bought in. No flowsheet; not reviewed.

Calculation maturity: not assessedDesign maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewedNitrogen organicsReport 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

Tier 0 screening per tonne of phthalimide: stoichiometry with a BASF patent's yield and ammonia ratio (ejector and tube reactor, continuous), electricity and heat from core's defaults. Phthalic anhydride is bought in. No flowsheet; not reviewed.

Capacity
per tonne of phthalimide (the dataset's basis); no plant size

What goes in and out

In

Out

  • PhthalimideMain product
  • WastewaterWastereaction water from the off-gas absorber; the absorption water itself is not counted (TODO)

Utilities: Electricity (core's Tier 0 default (ASSUMED, dated))

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 Phthalimide, flakes, 99.6 to 99.8 wt% (counted as phthalimide) 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
mass (single-output, from default) · product:phthalimide 100 %
Allocation findings
none
Change report
Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
Dataset pages
Phthalimide, flakes, 99.6 to 99.8 wt% (counted as phthalimide) Preliminary

KPI benchmark positions

KPIValueReference rangePosition
Ammonia consumption per t of phthalimide
No open source independent of the dataset gives an ammonia consumption for phthalimide (2026-11-05). The only figures found are the dataset's own source, US 4,419,519 Examples 1 and 2 (82.5/709 and 46/395, 0.1164 to 0.1165 t/t at 1.000 and 1.003 mol NH3 per mol anhydride), so they are not bound here. US 4,001,273 (Example 1, a countercurrent column at 1 mol NH3 per mol anhydride) has a single run whose phthalimide leaves partly as flakes and partly in a washed off-gas sent on to anthranilic acid, so its ammonia per t depends on how the off-gas share is counted (about 0.12 to 0.15 t/t); not bound. The Chemcess summary says excess ammonia for the co-current tube, without a figure. Ullmann's chapter (later edition doi:10.1002/14356007.a20_181.pub3; Chemcess cites the earlier .pub2) is licensed and was not read.
– t/tnot availablenot evaluated
Phthalic anhydride consumption per t of phthalimide– t/t1.027 to 1.027 t/t
Chemcess (n.d.) Phthalimide: properties, reactions, production and uses, section 3.1. Primary source as Chemcess gives it: Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, Phthalic Acid and Derivatives, doi:10.1002/14356007.a20_181.pub2 (via Chemcess, not read) (other)
not evaluated
Electricity per t of phthalimide
No open source with an electricity figure for phthalimide found (2026-11-05). Read: US 4,419,519 and US 4,001,273 (full text, no utility data), the Chemcess summary (no energy figures). Searched the web for phthalimide energy or steam per tonne: only phthalic anhydride figures came up. Ullmann's chapter (later edition doi:10.1002/14356007.a20_181.pub3; Chemcess cites the earlier .pub2) is licensed and was not read. The dataset's value is core's Tier 0 default, ASSUMED.
– kWh/tnot availablenot evaluated
Heat per t of phthalimide
No open source with a heat or steam figure for phthalimide found (2026-11-05); same search as the electricity KPI. The patents only state that the reaction is exothermic and that the feeds and the tube are heated. The dataset's value is core's Tier 0 default, ASSUMED.
– kWh/tnot availablenot 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/phthalimide-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: "Phthalimide by continuous reaction of molten phthalic anhydride with ammonia", 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}
}