Modelling in OpenLCA

Question

Hello!

I'm a bit confused with the way Ecoinvent 3.5 processes and flows are referenced in OpenLCA. There are several processes (and even more so flows) I found in SimaPro from Ecoinvent that I don't find back in OpenLCA. Is it because of the way OpenLCA deals with the import of Ecoinvent and reference the data?

1) In SimaPro, I find the process "Electricity, low voltage {NO} market for / Cut-off, U". The list of processes in OpenLCA doesn't display that one for instance. Also the list of flows is definitely not matching the list of processes but maybe that's by design? For instance, if I want to pick a flow from the section 5012: Sea and coastal freight water transport, only few options are available.

Also, is it absolutely necessary to create processes for each transport occurring in the system? I wanted to model various transportation as a flow (input to my process) but it does seems to be possible to create a transport flow and link it to a provider.

2) It seems that whether I'm creating a transport flow or picking one of the few transport flow available, as an input to my process, the provider list stay blank. In the PET example, transportation was modeled as a process, but for my system I wanted to have transports as flows inputs because I have loads of them. But maybe that's not an option?
Thanks a lot for the help!

Gaspard.

Answer 1

1) The ecoinvent database is mapped to openLCA reference data. Therefore, it's possible that some flows exist in openLCA that do not exist in SimaPro and vice versa. However, the openLCA ecoinvent database should contain all processes that you can find in SimaPro. If you add to your question what processes exactly are missing, I will investigate.

I suppose the naming for market processes is just different and you are looking for this process in openLCA: market for electricity, low voltage | electricity, low voltage | Cutoff, U

2) You do not have to create an individual process for each transportation stage in your life cycle model. Simply add the desired flow and the respective transportation process will be linked automatically. Moreover, you can change the provider manually which makes sense because depending on the database, a flow can have different providers (also in ecoinvent e.g. electricity, low voltage is produced by several hundred different processes). Either click into the provider field and select the provider (the process you want to link) manually or drag and drop a process from the navigation window into the input list of a process and the dragged and dropped process will be set as the default provider automatically.

I hope this helps. If you add additional information to your question and let me know via a comment I will revise my answer and let you know too (or ask a new question).

Comments

Thanks for this quick reply!

1) In SimaPro, I find the process "Electricity, low voltage {NO} market for / Cut-off, U". The list of processes in OpenLCA doesn't display that one for instance. Also the list of flows is definitely not matching the list of processes but maybe that's by design? For instance, if I want to pick a flow from the section 5012: Sea and coastal freight water transport, only few options are available.

2) It seems that whether I'm creating a transport flow or picking one of the few transport flow available, as an input to my process, the provider list stay blank. In the PET example, transportation was modeled as a process, but for my system I wanted to have transports as flows inputs because I have loads of them. But maybe that's not an option?

Cheers,
Gaspard.

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Please change your question instead of adding additional information to your question as a comment to an answer 8https://ask.openlca.org/37/how-does-ask-openlca-work). Thanks! I have revised my answer. i hope it helps.