Impact analysis results are zero

Question

Hi,

I've never used openLCA before and I am trying to calculate a product system, but one of my processes does not contribute to the results.

For some specifics:

- I'm using the LCA Commons (US) dataset for plastics product manufacturing [injection moulding, PP]. One input for the injection moulding process is PP resin. I changed the amount of the PP resin output to 3.48 kg.

- The LCIA method I want to use is Eco-Indicator 99 (H,A)

- When I look at the impact analysis section of injection moulding, all results are 0, which doesn't seem correct to me

- I calculated the entire system flows (injection moulding + transportation) and the results of doing that only take into account the transportation

Please let me know if I'm doing something wrong! I'm not sure what I need to do differently and I need to have these results as soon as possible. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

EcoIndicator 99 is not provided in the openLCA LCIA method package; if you use it from the ecoinvent method package, the flows in LCA Commons will not be recognised and therefore you will receive 0 impact assessment results. You can of course change the flows in the processes used to the ones from ecoinvent or create an EI99 method for LCACommons, but both are larger tasks. If you are interested let us know. As alternative, you can consider using a different, similar method such as ReCiPe.

Hth, Andreas

Comments

Hello Andreas,

sorry for following up on this old thread. Would it also be possible to export the custom flows that do not belong to ecoinvent as a zip file, then extract that zip and thereafter repackage the flows as JSON-files into the flows folder of the LCIA method? (Somewhat similar to the alternative process described in this question: https://ask.openlca.org/2056/is-it-possible-to-merge-2-lcia-methods-in-openlca?show=2056#q2056).
Thank you for your time!