Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of polypropylene resin: the published gate-to-gate data of three US plants (2015-2016, two-thirds bulk loop, one-third gas phase), natural gas combustion by stoichiometry. No flowsheet; not reviewed.
Polypropylene by Ziegler-Natta polymerisation of propylene, bulk loop and gas phase
Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of polypropylene resin: the published gate-to-gate data of three US plants (2015-2016, two-thirds bulk loop, one-third gas phase), natural gas combustion by stoichiometry. 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 polypropylene resin (the dataset's basis); no plant size
What goes in and out
In
Out
- PolypropyleneMain product
- Carbon dioxideEmission
- WaterEmissioncombustion water vapour
Utilities: Electricity (grid and cogeneration electricity of the source, both supplied as grid (ASSUMED)), Nitrogen (purge and inerting nitrogen, 64 kg/t; the source states no grade, so the gaseous site grade (the Atlas GAN market, not liquid nitrogen) is ASSUMED)
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 Polypropylene resin, 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:polypropylene 100 %
- Allocation findings
- none
- Change report
- Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
- Dataset pages
- Polypropylene resin, pellets Preliminary
KPI benchmark positions
| KPI | Value | Reference range | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity per t of polypropylene | – kWh/t | 250 to 277.8 kWh/t | not evaluated |
| Propylene consumption per t of polypropylene | – kg/t | 1,008 to 1,066 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/polypropylene-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
- Franklin Associates, a Division of Eastern Research Group (2021) Cradle-to-gate life cycle analysis of polypropylene (PP) resin, final report for the American Chemistry Council Plastics Division, Table 12
- European Commission JRC (2007) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers (POL BREF), sections 3.2.5, 3.3.3 and 3.3.5
- Prohaska, T. et al. (2022) Standard atomic weights of the elements 2021 (IUPAC Technical Report), Pure Appl. Chem. 94:573
- 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, Tables 1 and 13 (benchmark reference only)
- 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, Table 5 (benchmark reference only)
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: "Polypropylene by Ziegler-Natta polymerisation of propylene, bulk loop and gas phase", 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}
}