Location: RER - Europe
The process “tert-butyl amine, at plant, RER” is modelled for the production of tert-butyl amine from 2-methylpropene in Europe. Raw materials are modelled with a stoechiometric calculation. Emissions are estimated. Energy consumptions, infrastructure and transports are calculated with standard values.
tert-Butylamine (C4H11N; CAS 75-64-9 ) is a colourless liquid.
Amines having a tertiary alkyl group adjacent to the nitrogen atom (e.g., tert-butylamine) are difficult to obtain by conventional synthetic methods. These compounds can be prepared readily by addition of hydrogen cyanide to an alkene, e.g., 2-methylpropene, in an acidic medium.
The overall reaction is:
C4H8 + HCN + H2SO4 + 3 NaOH → C4H11N + NaCHO2 + Na2SO4 + H2O
This process, known as the Ritter reaction, is carried out at 30 – 60 °C, and the resulting formamide intermediate is hydrolyzed when the reaction mixture is heated to ca. 100 °C. To liberate the amine, the acidic mixture is neutralized to give sodium formate and the salt of the original acid, i.e., sodium sulfate. Because hydrocyanic acid is difficult to handle and causes corrosion problems, one carbon atom is lost as formate, and significant amounts of salts must be disposed of in deep wells, this process is restricted to amines that cannot be obtained by one of the methods. Besides tert-butylamine and tert-octylamine, these are only a few amines of pharmaceutical interest.
tert-Butylamine is used as an intermediate in the preparation of rubber accelerators, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, dyes and other organic compounds.
Frischknecht R., Jungbluth N., Althaus H.-J., Doka G., Dones R., Heck T., Hellweg S., Hischier R., Nemecek T., Rebitzer G. and Spielmann M. (2007) Overview and Methodology. Final report ecoinvent v2.0 No. 1. Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, CH, retrieved from: www.ecoinvent.org.
Gendorf (2000) Umwelterklärung 2000, Werk Gendorf. Werk Gendorf, Burgkirchen as pdf-File under: http://www.gendorf.de/pdf/umwelterklaerung2000.pdf
Karsten Eller, Erhard Henkes, Roland Rossbacher, Hartmut Höke: Amines, Aliphatic. Published online: 2000. In: Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, Seventh Edition, 2004 Electronic Release (ed. Fiedler E., Grossmann G., Kersebohm D., Weiss G. and Witte C.). 7 th Electronic Release Edition. Wiley InterScience, New York, Online-Version under: DOI: 10.1002/14356007.a02_001
Undefined unit processes (UPRs) are the unlinked, multi-product activity datasets that form the basis for all of the system models available in the ecoinvent database. This is the way the datasets are obtained and entered into the database by the data providers. These activity datasets are useful for investigating the environmental impacts of a specific activity (gate-to-gate), without regard to its upstream or downstream impacts.
