How can 'product flows' be traced?

Question

Hi everyone,

All impact categories in assessment methods are associated with an elementary flow. E.g., IPCC Climate Change gathers alls CO2, CH4, etc.

Can I do the same for electricity, just checking to which extent a process contributes to the total electricity consumption?

Thanks!

Balint

Answer 1

You can include products and waste flow in LCIA methods, but in a normal calculation products and waste flows "disappear". In the total requirements in the inventory results, you see however the contribution of each individual process to the results.

Comments

Thanks, Andreas,
I was afraid that because of the matrix calculation I can only see the results and the interim products will be "eaten up".
Does it mean then, once I want to see the contribution of electricity mix to some particular processes, I have to copy and rename the corresponding electricity mix as many times as many processes I want follow and have to use the renamed electricity mix (System process) as a provider. In this case, I will see in the process contribution the share of each renamed electricity mix. Otherwise, the software will just pick up the default provider and draw electricity from the same process.

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Not sure I understand - you will see the contribution of each process to the total results in the total requirements section; if you want to see the contribution of the process to several / all other processes individually, you can add a dummy elementary flow with equal amount as the product, and analyse this flow in the result alone (in inventory analysis or contribution tree) - better than copying the processes several times..

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Thank you for the hint Andreas! I'll try it.