Tier 0 screening per tonne of propylene oxide: stoichiometry with a patent's dichloropropane range, older US lime use, the LVOC BREF's effluent, and the IEA's Western European electricity and steam averages for propylene oxide (route not named). No flowsheet; not reviewed.
Propylene oxide by the chlorohydrin process with lime
Tier 0 screening per tonne of propylene oxide: stoichiometry with a patent's dichloropropane range, older US lime use, the LVOC BREF's effluent, and the IEA's Western European electricity and steam averages for propylene oxide (route not named). 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 propylene oxide (the dataset's basis); no plant size
What goes in and out
In
- PropyleneFeedstock
- ChlorineFeedstocklinked to chlor-alkali-1 (lca/mappings.yaml)
- Calcium oxideFeedstockquicklime, slaked to milk of lime on site; reading the source's lime as CaO is ASSUMED
- WaterFeedstockASSUMED: closes the water balance with the effluent
Out
- Propylene oxideMain product
- WastewaterWasteabout 40 t/t; its calcium chloride is emission:CaCl2, the 1,2-dichloropropane by-product is output:dichloropropane
Utilities: Electricity (IEA 2009 Western European average for propylene oxide, route not named (ASSUMED to apply)), Steam (counted as heat delivered; IEA 2009 Western European average for propylene oxide, route not named (ASSUMED to apply))
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 Propylene oxide 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:propylene-oxide 100 %
- Allocation findings
- none
- Change report
- Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
- Dataset pages
- Propylene oxide Preliminary
KPI benchmark positions
| KPI | Value | Reference range | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calcium chloride in the effluent per t of propylene oxide | – t/t | 2 to 2 t/t | not evaluated |
| 1,2-Dichloropropane by-product per t of propylene oxide No open source with a DCP figure independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). US 4,560,451 (description of the prior art) gives 0.1 to 0.2 t per t for the conventional lime process, the dataset's own source, whose midpoint it takes. ANL/CNSV-9 (1980, Fig. 4.58) states no by-product; its chlorine and propylene figures imply about 0.58 t of by-products per t (README), which is a reading, not a stated value. The LVOC BREF 2017 section 2.1.2.8 gives no DCP figure. | – t/t | not available | not evaluated |
| Chlorine consumption per t of propylene oxide, chlorohydrin process | – t/t | 1.59 to 1.59 t/t | not evaluated |
| Electricity per t of propylene oxide, chlorohydrin process | – kWh/t | 3,990 to 3,990 kWh/t | not evaluated |
| Propylene consumption per t of propylene oxide, chlorohydrin process | – t/t | 0.94 to 0.94 t/t | not evaluated |
| Steam (as heat) per t of propylene oxide, chlorohydrin process No open source with a steam figure for the chlorohydrin process independent of the dataset found (2026-11-05). The IEA information paper (Saygin et al. 2009) gives 18.0 GJ/t as the Western European average for propylene oxide (Table 13, p. 51, route not named) and 14.2 GJ/t at best practice (Table 1, p. 15, estimated as 20 % below), that is 3944 to 5000 kWh/t; the dataset takes the average, so binding it would be transcription only. ANL/CNSV-9 (1980, Fig. 4.58) shows no steam input (see po-chlorohydrin-specific-electricity). The sensible heat of the brine, about 2322 kWh/t, is a lower bound by first principles, not a reference. Also read: LVOC BREF 2017 section 2.1.2.8 and US 4,560,451 (no energy figures). | – kWh/t | not available | not evaluated |
| Waste water per t of propylene oxide, chlorohydrin process | – t/t | 43 to 43 t/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/propylene-oxide-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
- Falcke, H. et al. (2017) Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for the Production of Large Volume Organic Chemicals. JRC Science for Policy Report EUR 28882 EN (JRC109279), section 2.1.2.8 and Table 2.5 · doi:10.2760/77304
- Gaines, L.L. and Shen, S.Y. (1980) Energy and Materials Flows in the Production of Olefins and Their Derivatives. Argonne National Laboratory, ANL/CNSV-9 (US DOE), section 4.3.2.2 and Fig. 4.58
- Nielsen, K.A. (Union Carbide Corp.) Electrolytic process for the production of alkene oxides. US patent 4,560,451 (1985), description of the prior art
- 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
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: "Propylene oxide by the chlorohydrin process with lime", 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}
}