ecoinvent Forum Archive

Hello,

I am trying to model secondary recovery from a red mud waste facility using LCA. Red mud is a waste from the Bayer process. The waste (red mud) is dried and stored in tailing ponds and then covered with earth. It is effectively a landfill.

My question: In the past, for LCA everything input into a landfill was ouput as waste from the landfill. It was not interseting. Is this still the way Ecoinvent and SimaPro treat landfills? 

I am having trouble verifying that this is still how the software treats waste and nohing has changed. 

Can anyone help?

For a landfill, does all the material in, equal all the material out? (not including inputs such as electrcity etc of course). 

Hello,

If I understand your question right. Yes, landfill datasets have a -1 reference product. The negative RP essentially indicates that the waste is a physically entering the treatment - here landfill. I am not sure if the -1 is maintained in different softwares they employ our database - if not however, they are meant to function the same way.

Did that was helpful? If not please send us an email at support@ecoinvent.org

Kind regards,

Data analyst, ecoinvent association