Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of HDPE pellets: utilities and direct emissions from the Plastics Europe eco-profile's gate-to-gate averages of European plants, ethylene from stoichiometry with the sourced losses, 1-butene from the branch count. No flowsheet; not reviewed.
High-density polyethylene by low-pressure polymerisation of ethylene (European average)
Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of HDPE pellets: utilities and direct emissions from the Plastics Europe eco-profile's gate-to-gate averages of European plants, ethylene from stoichiometry with the sourced losses, 1-butene from the branch count. 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 HDPE pellets (the dataset's basis); no plant size
What goes in and out
In
- EthyleneFeedstock
- 1-ButeneFeedstockcomonomer, from the branch count of HDPE (ASSUMED 1-butene)
- HydrogenFeedstockchain-transfer agent for molecular-weight control
- Isobutane (2-methylpropane)Feedstockdiluent make-up; the source does not name the solvent (ASSUMED isobutane)
- AirFeedstockcombustion air of the flare or thermal oxidiser, free; its O2 is feed:O2
- WaterFeedstockASSUMED equal to the effluent
Out
- PolyethyleneMain productHDPE pellets
- WastewaterWaste
- Carbon dioxideEmission
Utilities: Electricity, Steam (the source's net thermal energy, counted as steam heat delivered (kWh); it may embed a credit for exported heat (deviation in the dataset))
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 High-density polyethylene, pellets 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 4 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:polyethylene 100 %
- Allocation findings
- none
- Change report
- Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
- Dataset pages
- High-density polyethylene, pellets Preliminary
KPI benchmark positions
| KPI | Value | Reference range | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity and heat as delivered per t of HDPE | – kWh/t | 570 to 940 kWh/t | not evaluated |
| Monomer (ethylene and comonomer) consumption per t of HDPE | – kg/t | 1,008 to 1,066 kg/t | not evaluated |
| Hydrocarbons to air (VOC, point sources and fugitives) per t of HDPE | – kg/t | 0.65 to 5.75 kg/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/polyethylene-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
- Plastics Europe (2026) Eco-profile of Polyolefins: High Density Polyethylene (HDPE), Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE), Linear Low Density Polyethylene (LLDPE), Polypropylene (PP). January 2026, LCA practitioner ifeu Heidelberg
- European Commission JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), August 2007, chapters 3 and 13
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: "High-density polyethylene by low-pressure polymerisation of ethylene (European average)", 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}
}