what is the reason for similar chractrization and different Normalized result between Simapro and OpenLCA?

Question

Hi, I am Maziar Ramezani. I am a graduate student and I got output from both Simapro and OpenLCA software for my work. My database is Ecoinvent for a couple of software. I used IMPACT2002 v2.15 for Simapro and IMPACT2002 v2.14 for OpenLCA. The characterization results for both software  are approximately the same. But that does not hold true to the normalized values. I wanted to know the reason why the normalized results of OpenLCA software yields very different values than Simapro, is there a special reason?? For example, in Simapro normalized global warming is equal to 0.178 Pt, while in OpenLCA it shows the number 1.7e7. For all other environmental effects with the identical characterization, the normalization number in OpenLCA is strangely higher than that of Simapro. Can I know the reason?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hello! I am Xiao, a graduate student from China. While conducting my research, I also came across the question you mentioned. I wanted to inquire if you have found the answer to it now. If you have, I would greatly appreciate it if you could kindly share the information with me. Thank you very much!

Comments

Hello.
I think the problem is with the method we entered in the OpenLCA software. I checked many different versions of different methods and it had the same problems.
The only way in my opinion is to convert the characterization results to normalized manually.
The conversion coefficients are in the methods available in the SimaPro software, or you can find them in the guidebook of that method.

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Thank you so much for your reply！