Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of propylene: propane and electricity from one published 2022 design (Oleflex type), the hydrogen-rich net gas and light ends burnt on site, combustion CO2 from the carbon balance. No flowsheet; not reviewed.
Propylene by catalytic propane dehydrogenation (moving bed with continuous catalyst regeneration)
Sourced conceptual inventory per tonne of propylene: propane and electricity from one published 2022 design (Oleflex type), the hydrogen-rich net gas and light ends burnt on site, combustion CO2 from the carbon balance. 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 (the dataset's basis); the source design is about 480 kt/a propylene
What goes in and out
In
- PropaneFeedstockC3 LPG taken as pure propane (ASSUMED)
- AirFeedstockcombustion air, free; its O2 is feed:O2
- Sodium hydroxideFeedstockcaustic soda 50 wt-%, per kg of solution; linked to chlor-alkali-1 (lca/mappings.yaml)
- ChlorineFeedstockchloride make-up of the catalyst regeneration; linked to chlor-alkali-1 (lca/mappings.yaml)
Out
- PropyleneMain product
- Carbon dioxideEmissionfrom burning the light ends of the net gas
- WaterEmissioncombustion water vapour
Utilities: Electricity (the design's PDH-unit electricity; its renewable supply contract is not modelled (grid at the site))
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, polymer grade 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 6 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 100 %
- Allocation findings
- none
- Change report
- Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.
- Dataset pages
- Propylene, polymer grade Preliminary
KPI benchmark positions
| KPI | Value | Reference range | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct CO2 per t of propylene No open source read with a direct CO2 figure (2026-11-05). A process study in J. Clean. Prod. (2022) appeared only in a search-engine summary and was not read, so its figure is not recorded. The design report the dataset uses lists no direct emission from burning its own fuel gas in its GWP breakdown (ESIA Annex S, Table 6.2). The dataset's value follows from its carbon balance with the net gas burnt on site. | – kg/t | not available | not evaluated |
| Propylene per mass of propane fed | – kg/kg | 0.85 to 0.85 kg/kg | not evaluated |
| Electricity per t of propylene No open source independent of the dataset's own found (2026-11-05). Read: LVOC BREF sections 2.2.7 and 3.2.1 (PDH named, no data); JRC (Boulamanti and Moya 2017, EUR 28471 EN, no PDH figures); Ren, Patel and Blok 2006 (Energy 31:425, open copy: PDH named in a figure, no PDH figure found in the text); Honeywell UOP 2019 white paper (no utility figures). The dataset's value is the Ceyhan design report's (ESIA Annex S, Table 4.1). A Honeywell UOP slide deck of 2024 with energy figures is marked confidential and was not used. A Lummus Catofin technical sheet could not be retrieved (HTTP 404). | – kWh/t | not available | 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-pdh-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
- RINA Consulting for Ceyhan Polipropilen Uretim A.S. (2022) Ceyhan Propane Dehydrogenation - Polypropylene Production Project, Life Cycle Assessment Report (ESIA Annex S), Doc. No. P0031918-1-H2 Rev. 1, sections 3.1 and 4.1, Table 4.1 (published by the US International Development Finance Corporation, February 2023)
- RINA Consulting for Ceyhan Polipropilen Uretim A.S. (2022) Ceyhan PDH-PP Project, BAT-BREF Evaluation (ESIA Annex P): air emission sources of the PDH unit named, not quantified per t
- Marsh, M., Wery, J. (2019) Filling the propylene gap: shaping the future with on-purpose technologies. Honeywell UOP white paper UOP8395 (manufacturer literature)
- 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), sections 2.2.7 and 3.2.1 (PDH named, not described) · doi:10.2760/77304
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 by catalytic propane dehydrogenation (moving bed with continuous catalyst regeneration)", 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}
}