Why can the system process be displayed in the process contribution of the report instead of the unit process?

Question

Hi,

I am going to investigate and compare the environmental impacts of the CO2 capture process employing a new absorbent and traditional solvent from the whole life cycle perspective by using a cradle to grave life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The data of the new solvent does not exist in the database, so it is necessary to establish the unit process according to the literature. My question is as follows,

Why can the system process be displayed in the Process Contributions of the report instead of the unit process? Should the unit process be transformed into a system process?

Comments

Thank you for your reply！ I'm sorry I didn't describe the problem clearly enough.
In short, on the "Report viewer", why can't a unit process or a system process that I created be shown in "Process Contributions"?
In fact, I don't quite understand the difference between unit process and system process. I think the only difference is that the system process is composed of multiple unit processes.

Answer 1

Thank you for your further explanation. A system process is basically result of an LCA calcualation, and summarises all inputs and outputs of a life cycle; not the impacts, but the flows, i.e. the resources and emissions. When you have calculated a product system, you can save the results as a system process. You can try that and you will see the differences, a system process typically has many more inputs and outputs than a unit process.

For the process contribution in the project report, you will only see those processes that are part of your product system. If you have system processes in your product system, you will see those, if not, not.

I hope this helps a bit?

Best wishes,

Andreas