Cradle to Gate
Identity ID
9496c068-126b-4f58-9e19-a54d45aa8823
Materials
Associated ID
d4db6075-47b1-48a1-bb38-08dd9eff4a7f
Included activities starts
Included activities ends
Description
Phosphoric acid is widely used in fields such as agricultural fertilisers, industrial treatment, the food industry, pharmaceuticals and detergents, coatings and ceramic production; phosphoric acid is modelled as a pure substance; industrially this product is mostly used in the form of an 85% solution, and when modelling this substance the user needs to add a solvent of their choice in the model; to reach industrial grade, solvent extraction purification is used to remove impurities from fertiliser-grade phosphoric acid; the dataset contains the main raw and auxiliary materials, energy, waste and atmospheric emissions of the production process, and infrastructure such as the manufacture of production equipment and the construction of plant buildings is not included within the dataset boundary; the data inventory is formed by merging data from multiple sources; the production activities of this product include pretreatment, extraction, washing, back-extraction, concentration, and heavy-metal removal and decolourisation. Raffinate phosphoric acid is a by-product of this production process, allocated according to mass.
Activity Description
The production activities of this product include pretreatment, extraction, washing, back-extraction, concentration, heavy-ends removal and decolorization and other processes.
Process Description
The chemical formula of phosphoric acid is H3PO4, CAS number 7664-38-2. The pure product is colorless and transparent orthorhombic crystals. The industrial grade is mostly colorless and viscous liquid, odorless and slightly sour. It is easily soluble in water and miscible with ethanol. The aqueous solution is weakly acidic. When heated to 213°C, it will lose water and form pyrophosphoric acid, and further heating will form metaphosphoric acid. It has stable chemical properties and is not easy to decompose. It is a ternary medium-strong acid that can react with alkali to form normal salts and acid salts (such as potassium dihydrogen phosphate and diammonium hydrogen phosphate). Phosphoric acid is widely used in agriculture (producing high-efficiency phosphate fertilizers such as diammonium phosphate and monoammonium phosphate), industry (metal surface phosphating treatment for rust prevention, electroplating solution preparation, detergent production), food industry (as sour agent, nutritional enhancer), pharmaceutical field (preparation of phosphate drugs) and detergents, coatings, ceramics and other industries. This process is to obtain industrial grade phosphoric acid by purifying wet phosphoric acid through solvent extraction.
Time period
2022
2026
Geography
China
Macroeconomic value
Business-as-Usual
Data validation
Yes
Technology
Current Technology
Technology comment
Solvent extraction purification of wet-process phosphoric acid is an advanced upgrade technology that enables deep purification of wet-process phosphoric acid. It is the most common process for removing impurities and purifying fertilizer-grade phosphoric acid. Specifically: the raw phosphoric acid is preheated, then phosphate slurry is added for desulfurization, sodium hydroxide solution is added for defluorination, and a flocculant is used for sedimentation to obtain pretreated acid. Subsequently, purified phosphoric acid is obtained through extraction, washing, and back-extraction steps. Finally, it is concentrated to 85% concentration, and deweighting and decolorization are performed, while the raffinate acid is concentrated to produce raffinate phosphoric acid.