User

Dear User,

You can access the heat and power cogeneration data in the “undefined” form, i.e. before linking and allocation. You can do so by accessing ecoQuery, if you never accessed before please see here https://www.ecoinvent.org/database/how-to-use-ecoinvent-3-online/first-login-to-ecoinvent-3/first-login-to-ecoinvent-3.html. When you look for a dataset, make sure you have selected “undefined”. There you will be able to see how much fuel is used to produce the relative amounts of heat and electricity.

If you are looking at the dataset using an attributional system model (cut-off or APOS), remember that the allocation for energy is done based on exergy. You can see the allocation information by looking at the true value property recorded in the dataset (when you search in ecoQuery with the system model selected).

For more information on how to consult ecoinvent online please see our website (https://www.ecoinvent.org/database/how-to-use-ecoinvent-3-online/how-to-use-ecoinvent-3-online.html) and training webinars (https://www.ecoinvent.org/support/webinars/webinars-and-tutorials.html). This webinar in particular (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXdS4ohbvIk) shows you how to navigate ecoQuery.

I hope this is of help to you.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear User,

For the product “natural gas, high pressure” we assume a default heating value of 39MJ/Nm3 (based on International Recommendations of Energy statistics (IRES), Chapter 4.C.2). You can also find additional information on the composition of natural gas in the ecoinvent v2 report (06_V_Erdgas.pdf). The version 2 reports can be downloaded after logging into Version 1+2 of ecoQuery and clicking on the “Reports” section.

For biogas a LHV of 22.73 MJ/Nm3 is assumed. More information on biogas is also available in a version 2 report, namely 17_Bioenergy.pdf.

In many cases the LHV of products is recorded as a property of the product in the dataset. For the upcoming version v3.8 we are harmonizing these properties and all products that require an LHV will have it as a property.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Sophie,

You are correct, currently the only hydrogen producing dataset is ‘hydrogen production, gaseous, petroleum refinery operation’. We have several datasets producing hydrogen as a by-product. You can find all these datasets by filtering the activity overview for ‘hydrogen’ in the ‘product name’ column. We are very interested in having more data on hydrogen as energy storage, so should you have any lead on data we would be happy to hear from you.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Sophie,

The hydropower plant construction datasets for ‘hydropower plant construction, reservoir, non-alpine’ and ‘hydropower plant construction, run-of-river’ represent the total amount of materials needed to build the mentioned park of hydropower plants. For reservoir this is composed of 52 plants with a total capacity of 9130 MW and for the run-of-river the park produces a total of 15484 GWh/a which relates to the entire power plant park of Switzerland. (see the general comments of the datasets). Capacity data is available in the statistics for renewable energy of the Swiss government. Please also check out the ecoinvent v2.2 report on ‘Wasserkraft’ available in the ‘Reports’ section after logging in to Version 1 + 2 of ecoQuery. In section 11.1 you can find data on the storage capacity of the reservoir power plants.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Sophie,

I assume you are referring to the IPCC GWP 100a indicator in cut-off. For geothermal powerplant basically all the impact comes from the construction of the plant. If you subtract the construction of the plant you should arrive to a number close to zero. However, be aware the not all ‘electricity production, deep geothermal’ have the same power plant as input. Most of them link to the ‘market for geothermal power plant, 5.5MWel’ but some link directly to the construction activity for which several geographies are available with different scores. So be sure to subtract the correct amount. In some softwares (SimaPro) there is an option to toggle out infrastructure, so maybe this could also help you. If this does not solve your issue please send us an email (with screenshots if possible) to support@ecoinvent.org with the exact datasets used, version of the database, system model and performed calculations.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Tim,

Thank you for making us aware of this. We are updating the meta information of the elementary exchanges, among which these three are listed and being updated.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Valeria,

If I understand you well then your approach is correct. You will need to use different activities as inputs to model the different sources of energy, let it be from CHP, from the grid and from different fuels for heating.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Tim,

Please have a look at the activity overview. This is an overview over all datasets and their reference and byProducts respectively. You can filter the file for waste byproducts and see which datasets have included wastes.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Elisabeth,

Thank you for your question. We do not have a dataset for tin-lead ribbons for photovoltaic panels. However, if you are looking for tin-lead alloys we do solder production datasets that produce these. Search for ‘solder production’ and you will find the following datasets:

• solder production, bar, Sn63Pb37, for electronics industry
• solder production, bar, Sn95.5Ag3.9Cu0.6, for electronics industry
• solder production, paste, Sn63Pb37, for electronics industry
• solder production, paste, Sn95.5Ag3.9Cu0.6, for electronics industry

Although I cannot assess whether these are applicable to use for ribbons in PV panels.

I hope this is of help to you.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Tim,

The input to the market itself represents losses of electricity through transmission. So if you ask for 1 kWh of ‘electricity, medium voltage’ from the market you actually get the impacts for 1 + X, with X being the amount of the input to itself. This is present in all electricity markets and also in other markets where the amount usually represents losses during transport.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear User,

Thank you for your email. From your email I gather that you are not using any software in combination with the ecoinvent database. Regarding your questions:

• estimate the final CO2-Eq emissions? For this we have several indicators that you can access in the LCIA tab of the dataset. For CO2-Eq the IPCC GWP 100a is a prominently used indicator. However there are also other ones available.
• get a breakdown of emissions by all activities that contributed? This can not be done automatically in ecoQuery. Either you manually pull the emissions for each input of the dataset and scale it according to the amount or you use a software tool. We provide a list of software tools that work with the ecoinvent database on our “Resellers” page. If you can code, you may use the matrices in the file “universal_matrix_export_3.7.1_cut-off.7z” (instead of building them from the spold files, as instructed in ‘ecoinvent 3_instructions for matrix building from spold.pdf’). With the matrices, you may quickly collect all the inputs to each process. You may then calculate the contributions, either by calculating the scores with the matrices, or by reading them from the excel file “ecoinvent 3.7.1_cutoff_lcia-cumulated-matrices_xls.7z”.

I hope this is of help to you.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Tim,

Although the datasets are named similarly, they are very different in their composition. Both represent an unweighted mix of active/passive components (see the dataset composition). As active components contain parts like integrated circuits (which have a very high GWP) and the passive components mainly contain very basic electronic components the results vary this strongly.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Rolf,

• Allocation correction is not in 3.7.1 – Correct.
• Allocation correction is expected to be implemented in the upcoming v3.8. – Specification needed: Allocation correction for biogenic carbon in the wood and paper sector is expected to be implemented in the upcoming v3.8.
• For your information, we will publish an “EN15804 version” of the Cut-off system model with the allocation corrections and the required EF3 method included.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Hi Karin,

May I direct you to this thread:

https://www.ecoinvent.org/support/ecoinvent-forum/topic.html?&tid=448

There it is mentioned:

“You are right that the exact conditions for natural gas networks at different pressure levels are not specified in ecoinvent. These will differ from system to system and with the gas composition. We therefore recommend to scale the amount of natural gas required for your system based on it’s heating value. The heating value for natural gas in ecoinvent is standardized to 39MJ/m3.”

I hope this answers your question,

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Rolf,

The changes applied in version 3.7.1 form the basis for upcoming allocation corrections and are not the allocation corrections themselves. In summary, the applied changes serve to balance wood and paper related datasets on the UPR level in terms of biogenic carbon. This is a perquisite for calculating the distortion introduced through allocation for each dataset as we do not want to correct for carbon which is simply present due to imbalanced datasets. The actual correcting flows will be included in the next version of ecoinvent.

I hope this clears things up.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Antonin,

This discrepancy is due to the way that allocation works in ecoinvent. Usually economic allocation is performed, this means in datasets that produce multiple products the burdens get allocated according to the value of the products. The higher a value a product has, the more of the burdens get allocated to it. This can lead to distortions of the physical flows of the products as the price, weight and carbon content are usually not proportional. This means more carbon can be allocated to a product which contains less carbon. As emissions to environment and carbon binding from the atmosphere usually does not happen in the same datasets, the economic allocation can lead to such discrepancies in the LCI.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Rolf,

The adjustments in carbon balance for upcoming biogenic carbon allocation corrections are documented in section 4.5 of the report of changes for version 3.7.1 (https://www.ecoinvent.org/files/change_report_v3_7_1_20201217.pdf). Properties are accessible through ecoQuery, for changes implemented within the inventory you might also consider using the change report annex if you would like to see the specific changes introduced for the different datasets mentioned in the report. The annex is available on ecoQuery in the files section, supporting documents, file “ecoinvent 3.7.1_Change Report_including Annex.zip.7z”.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Jonas,

Unfortunately, ecoinvent does not provide LCIA results for peak hours/peak season of combined heat and power plants. The minimum year for which a dataset is valid is one year. Theoretically, we could have datasets describing peak season of CHP plants, however, currently this is not the case. I assume you can use the ecoinvent dataset as a base to model the different seasons/peaks of the power plant. However, you would need to check the dependencies of inputs and emissions in relation to the load of the plant in order to model a timeline.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Users,

Thank you for reaching out to us. You are correct, that currently ecoinvent does not provide residual electricity mixes. We do plan on integrating residual mixes in ecoinvent, however I cannot give you a forecast on its availability as this is not an official project yet. Please apologize the vague information. Thus we also cannot provide any guidelines for their calculation. We can suggest to model the residual mixes similar to our current electricity markets, using the shares given by the AIB statistics and using our country-specific electricity production datasets. Although you need to define technology splits for some of the categories in the residual mixes as we do not have a 1:1 match for all categories in the database. E.g. for 'Nuclear Total' we have dataset for boiling water and pressure water reactors.

Best regards on behalf of the ecoinvent team,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Pascal,

Thank you for your comment. Indeed you are correct, that the reference to the year 2014 in the general comment is remnant of the comment in the undefined dataset, which remained unchanged since its creation. We acknowledge that this is confusing. The reference to 2017 and other timestamps you mention have different meanings:

In the General comment: ‘This dataset describes the electricity available on the high voltage level in Western Electricity Coordinating Council, US part only for year 2014. This is done by showing the transmission of 1kWh electricity at high voltage.’ This comment remains from the original dataset which was created for 2014. The section following this comment indicates for which year the statistics on which the shares and production volumes are based on are valid. Nevertheless, the electricity markets get regularly updated (yearly). Check the approach we use to update the electricity markets here. The empty market in the unlinked version gets updated with new shares and production volumes and the general comment is appended.

The start and end of period indicate during which years the dataset is considered valid. For the linked dataset the ‘End of period’ is set to the year of the publication of the selected ecoinvent version (e.g. 2020 for 3.7.1). This is also why the comment in ‘Extrapolations’ is added, which states that the dataset has been extrapolated from the ‘End of Period’ registered in the undefined dataset (which in this case is 2017) to the year of calculation (2020).

The field ‘Last Edit Date’ refers to the date when the undefined version of this dataset was edited the last time.

I hope this clears things up for you and I apologise for any confusion. When looking at electricity markets please refer to the second part of the general comment to gather on which year and statistics the shares and production volumes are based

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Ben,

Currently, we only have a CH and GLO (RoW) market for biogas. This means all non-CH datasets that ask for ‘biogas’ link to the RoW market, which includes a link to ‘treatment of biowaste by anaerobic digestion, RoW’, which in turn gets fed by all biowaste except for CH-biowaste. This also includes mandarin production from South Africa and cotton seed from India. So your explanation seems to be correct. If you need a specific biogas market and suppliers for Spain you would need to model this in your foreground.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Johan,

You can find a list of all geographies (with IDs) of the most recent version in the activity overview (tab ‘geographies’) downloadable in the database section of our website (there called “List of all ecoinvent dataset”). Alternatively, you can find the activity overview of previous ecoinvent versions here. The activity overview from 3.4 upwards contains a tab with geographies and their IDs.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Jáchym,

You can find the UUIDs of all processes in the Activity Overview file which can be found on our website. Also the UUIDs of elementary and intermediate exchanges, geographies and compartments are in their corresponding tabs.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear James,

I am not sure I fully understand your question. In ecoinvent you can find information about electricity for different countries, for country mixes you can refer to the “market for electricity, xxx voltage”, for your case for the geography IT. For these as well you can consult the unit process, LCI and LCIA. 

On residual electricity mixes:

This website provides informative documents regarding residual electricity mixes: Link. However, not in regards to OpenLCA.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Stefan,

The methanol production activity is a v2 process and well described in the v2 report “08_Chemicals.pdf” available in ecoQuery in the “Reports” section after logging in to v1+2. The report mentions in section 53.5.3 that the emissions to air (including CO2) of the process are dominated by the emissions of the furnace. With the advancement to v3 the emissions caused by the generation of heat are plugged into the dataset with the exchange “heat, district or industrial, natural gas”.

I hope this answers your question, otherwise do not hesitate to reply.

Best regards,

Johannes

Dear Christelle,

The “waste cement, hydrated” in waste water treatment datasets is a burden added to the datasets due to the sludge being incinerated and dumped in a landfill. A more detailed explanation on this can be found in section 4.1.6 of the ecoinvent version 2 report “13-I_Waste_treatment_General_v2.1.pdf”. Version 2 reports can be downloaded after logging into Version 1+2 of ecoQuery and selecting the “Reports” section.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Christian,

Unfortunately, no. As already answered in this thread: Link, the first step towards allocation correction was taken for 3.7 by balancing carbon in the wood and paper sectors. We are working in implementing allocation corrections based on carbon in those sectors and we are aiming at having them ready for the EN15804-compatible add-on version set to be available in a couple of months time else it will also be available in v 3.8. 

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear David,

Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, this process does not exist in the ecoinvent database. To receive help on how to model new processes in SimaPro I can advise you to contact their support or check out the SimaPro manual.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent assication

Dear Tim,

Elementary exchanges starting with “Transformation,” show the changes in land “type”/”quality” that are introduced by an activity and they show how large of an area is affected. The area of all “Transformation, from” and “Transformation, to” exchanges in one dataset are supposed to cancel each other out, however there are cases where land gets transformed from one “type” of “Transformation,” to another, which showcases a degradation of the land through an activity. Activities that contain only two elementary exchanges “Transformation, from forest, intensive" and "Transformation, to forest, intensive" with the same amount show land being transformed from forest and back to forest by the activity.

I hope this answers your question, otherwise please come back to us or send an email to us on support@ecoinvent.org.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent assiciation

Dear Samantha,

You are correct, the ReCiPe 2016 methodology was not included in ecoinvent 3.7. We are at the stage of reviewing the method implementation and it will be added it to the next release (v3.8) of the database.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Mohammad,

Thank you for your questions. Please find my answers to below:

1. In the 'From Technosphere' section of LCI, there are two inputs for copper. First is 'Copper' and the second is 'sheet rolling, copper'. Are they independent material intakes or the 'sheet rolling copper' is only a manufacturing process for the total copper amount?

“sheet rolling, copper” is a service, which means it does not contain a material input. This information can be found in the comments of the dataset or by checking it’s exchanges.

2. The electricity and heat consumption in this process is too high (326 kwh for 6layer pcb and 94 kwh for 2 layer pcb) compared to other manufacturing processes. What is the justification?

See the ecoinvent 2 report “18_II_Electronics_modules.pdf” for a detailed information on the origin of those numbers. Due to the age of the datasets, it is possible that these are not representative anymore today. The ecoinvent 2 report is accessible by login in to v 1+2 here and selecting “Reports”.

I hope this answers your questions.

Best regards,

Johannes

Dear James,

Thank you for you post. Please find my answers to your questions down below:

we have downloaded the database. of these data, I uploaded the consequential database into openLCA in order to compile my inventories but some of them(inventory data) are not found in it. Can I upload  any of the rest (cut-off, apos) into consequential and continue the search of the remaining database? where should I get the rest of my inventory data?

To our knowledge the only way to integrate the ecoinvent database in OpenLCA is through the integration process by Greendelta, the company publishing OpenLCA. As we do not have any control over this process I ask you to please contact them for help or issues with OpenLCA.

what are actual the differences between the consequential, APOS, and cut-off database?

As a start, I recommend you to check out this page of our website: System Models in ecoinvent 3. Cut-off, APOS and consequential are system models. In short, a system model describes a set of rules with which the datasets in their undefined state are linked and which are used to calculated the LCIs of the datasets. So each of the system model handles certain aspects of the linking process differently and is able to answer some questions better than the others. It is worth spending some understanding the differences between the system models, which will help you choose the right one for your purpose. The resulting datasets produced by the system models cannot be mixed. For new users we usually recommend to use the cut-off system model as this is the most approachable of the three.

lastly, every LCIA method of my loaded database are identified  as obsolete even though they were downloaded simultaneously with the package. how can this be handled?

If an LCIA method is marked as “obsolete” it means the characterization factors have not been updated in the update to ecoinvent v3.6. The term is slightly misleading, however, this should not be the case for all of the LCIA methods. The following should not carry this tag (v3.6):

• Cumulative energy demand
• Ecological footprint
• Ecological scarcity 2013 (+not LT)
• Ecosystem damage potential
• ILCD 2.0 2018 midpoint (+no LT)
• IPCC 2013 (+no LT)
• ReCiPe V1.13 (E/H/I)
• Selected LCI results (additional)

Please also take note of our FAQ and Documents & Files section on our website where you can find additional information and files to help you understand and use the database.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Thibault, In 3.7 only the wood and sector section will be corrected in terms of biogenic carbon balance, which forms the base for future allocation corrections.Best regards, Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Christoph, The general comment of the dataset “natural gas production, DE” mentions 50% of produced gas to be sour gas. Using the densities of sour and sweet gas in (Faist Emmenegger et al. 2007, pdf report 06_V_Erdgas, mentioned above) of 1.00 kg/m3 and 0.84 kg/m3 (Tab. 3.4) respectively we arrive at a density of 0.92 kg/m3 for this particular producing activity.Best regards,Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Xiaojin, Apart from classifying activities according to ISIC we also classify each product according to the Central Product Classification system (CPC). Maybe this can offer you an additional level by which to group datasets. In the case of electricity generation, ISIC does not provide a finer classification than "3510:Electric power generation, transmission and distribution".Thank you for your suggestion we will take this under consideration. Best regards, Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Christian,

Yes, it is true that allocation correction was not implemented. However, for version 3.7 we just finished the implementation of carbon corrections for the wood and paper sector, which will be published later this year. We apologize for the misinformation in the mentioned thread.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Raluca,

As stated correctly by Sphera Customer Care, you are not able to change the parameters of a dataset in GaBi and therefore it is not possible to use the parametrized dataset in GaBi directly. What you could do, is to consult the mathematical relations in ecoQuery and calculate your own version of the dataset. If you do this please take into account that the version of the dataset in ecoQuery is in the pre-linked unallocated state.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Raluca,

Parameters for datasets are only accessible in the Undefined Unit Processes (i.e. before linking and allocation) of the dataset, which are not accessible in GaBi. To view the parameters, please use our online portal ecoQuery (for which you should have received a login from Sphera). Search for the dataset there and you can view the parameters. To get you started in ecoQuery, check out this page: How to Use ecoinvent 3 online.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear User,

These are very software specific questions. For an answer please contact the support of OpenLCA (Greendelta).

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear User,

Yes, you are right. It is incorrect to add an emission flow as an input to a dataset. With an input you want to add the burdens associated with the production of this product to your system. In the case when a product can not be found, you could look for a proxy to substitute the burdens of the original product with or consider the missing input in the calculation of uncertainty.

However, we do not have "3,4,5-Trihydroxybenzoic acid" as a flow in ecoinvent, neither intermediate nor as elementary flow. If an impact assessment method does not contain an entry for the considered flow, it is also not included in the calculation and thus does not have any impact on the result of that impact assessment method.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Pascal,

Thank you for pointing this out. This is indeed an error. The direct emissions for ozone should be 4.16E-06 kg/kWh for all electricity markets. We will correct this for the new release of the database.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent association

Dear Alicia,

In many cases the lifetimes are not directly reported in the electricity production datasets, but in the production datasets of the power plant. For many, the lifetime can be found in one of the comments, in the properties or in the accompanying report. For instance:

electricity production, natural gas, 10MW: Uses a “gas turbine, 10MW electrical”. The dataset “gas turbine construction, 10MW electrical” reports a lifetime of 80’000 h. In section 12.1 of the ecoinvent v2 report “06_V_Erdgas.pdf” more detail is given on the gas turbine construction.

heat and power co-generation, natural gas, 160kW electrical, Jakobsberg (electricity only): This dataset does have a generating unit with a single lifetime. In fact, it uses different components with different lifetimes. Details on this are reported in v2 report “06_XIV_Waermekraftkopplung.pdf”.

electricity production, natural gas, conventional power plant: Uses a “gas power plant, 100MW electrical”. Here the lifetime (180’000h) is again reported in the production dataset “gas power plant construction, 100MW electrical” and further detail can be found in section 11.2 of v2 report “06_V_Erdgas.pdf”.

Ecoinvent v2 reports can be accessed by login in to Version 2 of the database here and selecting the reports tab.

I hope this answers your question, otherwise come back to us.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

Dear Matteo,

Addressing your first question: Carbon dioxide emissions in the hydro power datasets are labelled as “Carbon dioxide, from soil or biomass stock” thus originating from biogenic sources. However, SimaPro seems to use a different nomenclature for this emission. In such cases you  can also check the original naming in ecoQuery. The exchange is taken into account for the calculation of the GWP as you can check in the methods section in SimaPro. For supplementary qualitative explanations to Hertwich (2013) on the origins of GHG emissions through hydro power check out the ecoinvent v2 report “06_VIII_Wasserkraft.pdf" and Barros (2011). Data availability on these emissions has changed greatly since the creation of the original datasets in ecoinvent v2 which is why there is a large increase in their magnitude.

To your second question:  In ecoinvent all the “electricity production, hydro, reservoir, non-alpine region” datasets have the same carbon dioxide and methane emission, which represent average emissions for this type of electricity production. The emissions only vary from “region” to “region” namely alpine, non-alpine and tropical regions. In reality these numbers vary from location to location for reasons mentioned in the sources above.

I hope this answers your questions.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

References:

• Hertwich, E.G., 2013. Addressing biogenic greenhouse gas emissions from hydropower in LCA. Environmental science & technology, 47(17), pp.9604-9611.
• Barros, N., Cole, J.J., Tranvik, L.J., Prairie, Y.T., Bastviken, D., Huszar, V.L., Del Giorgio, P. and Roland, F., 2011. Carbon emission from hydroelectric reservoirs linked to reservoir age and latitude. Nature Geoscience, 4(9), pp.593-596.

Dear User,

To answer this question please take at look at the ecoinvent v2 report “06_VI_Kohle.pdf” available through ecoQuery, after logging in to v2 of ecoinvent database. The exchange comment of “hard coal power plant” in the “electricity production, hard coal, DE” mentions that the calculation is based on the 500MW power plant. The initial dataset for energy from hard coal was based on “hard coal burned in power plant” (in MJ) and not as the electricity produced. The value of 1.30E-12 represents the fraction of the power plant “used” to burn 1 MJ of hard coal and is used in all hard coal burning datasets representing a European average. From Tab. 9.8 and Fig. 9.2 we can derive the European average efficiency used (0.351).

Thus:

500’000 kW * 150’000 h * 3.6 MJ/kWh = 2.7e11 MJ produced over the lifetime of the powerplant

1/(2.7e11 MJ / 0.351) = 1.30E-12 MJ-1

In the current dataset this value is converted to hard coal power plant per kWh with a country-specific efficiency as can be seen in the parameters of the dataset.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

Dear Dieuwertje,

To answer this, I recommend to you to have a look at the comment of the input of “fluosilicic acid, without water, in 22% solution state” to “market for fluosilicic acid, without water, in 22% solution state, GLO” in the consequential model.  There it states:

“This is a conditional exchange. Fluosilicic acid is a by-product of phosphoric acid production, and therefore the market for crude fluosilicic acid is constrained by the demand for phosphoric acid. A change in the demand for fluosilicic acid can therefore not be met by increased production. In case of shortage of fluosilicic acid, it can be substituted by hydrofluoric acid (HF). That is the reason why in case of fluosilicic acid shortage of supply, cryolite production from fluosilicic acid will be substituted by its alternative production (with HF). That is, the avoided production of cryolite from fluosilicic acid will be compensated via the market for cryolite i.e. by its alternative production route, cryolite (from HF)."

So in short: The system meets the increase in demand of fluosilicic acid by reducing the “cryolite production, from fluosilicic acid". To achieve this is rearranges the activity in a way that former inputs are outputs and vice-versa and adjusts the amounts to produce 1kg of fluosilicic acid.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards, Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

Dear User,

In ecoinvent CHP systems are modelled in a way that the reference product is heat and electricity is produced as a by-product. How electricity is further burdened depends on the used system model. More information on system models and how they handle by-products can be found here. In the allocation system models (cut-off and APOS) this means the impacts of the CHP plant are allocated according to exergy and price (see Data quality Guidelines for ecoinvent 3). In consequential (substitutional system model), CHP is not part of the electricity mix so there is no need for accounting for avoided resources.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

Dear Sara,

I am not sure I understand what you would like to achieve. To better address your issue please send an email to support@ecoinvent.org with a detailed description of your problem as well as:

• The LCA software you are using
• ecoinvent database version
• System model
• A list of datasets involved

Best regards,
Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

Dear Gustavo,

I checked the datasets (magnesium-alloy, AZ91, diecasting, at plant, v2.0.1 and v2.2) and reports (10_Metals_v2.1.pdf: Life Cycle Inventories of Metals) of v2 and it seems that diecasting of magnesium always included the material input of magnesium (you can check by accessing version 2 data here). To doublecheck this I summed up the components of the laptop dataset, which according to 18_III_Electronics_devices.pdf report should be 3.15kg. Assuming diecasting of magnesium does not contain any material I do not arrive at this weight. So I conclude that total sum of magnesium in the laptop dataset is 2*0.2832 kg = 0.5664 kg. Probably the creators of the dataset assumed that half of the magnesium was diecast, while the other half was not.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

Dear User,

Could you please provide more context to your setup? What version of ecoinvent are you using and which application do you use for modelling? Because I was not able to reproduce the situation. In the current version of ecoinvent this flow is neither an intermediate exchange nor an elementary exchange i.e. does not exist. Are you perhaps using other data sources than ecoinvent? Generally, it is not correct to use an emission as an input to a model. Elementary exchanges are designed to contribute directly to the overall LCIA results and the role of the intermediate exchanges is to include the production of this particular product and all of the elementary exchanges in the background system attached to the production of that intermediate exchange.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

Dear User,

We currently do not have a dataset on weathering steel in the ecoinvent database. Depending on the modelling situation you could think about approximating it with “steel, low-alloyed”.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent Association

Dear Pascal,

For your better understanding I translated the most important part of the description in the report for “natural gas, burned in gas motor, for storage”:

```

In this study, gas motors are mainly used in the "natural gas" part. For example, they are used for the compression of natural gas in seasonal storage or for liquefaction. [...]. These modules can be used as fist approximation if no other data is available. 200 kW Gas motors with three-way catalytic converter are described. The activities "natural gas, burned in gas motors, for storage" describe the required gas input, emissions and material usage for gas motors.

Material use: is included with a 206kW gas motor from CHP section (Heck 2003). As with heating and CHP, no demand for land is included.

Emissions: Emission factors are summarized in table 12.8. The reviewed motors are relatively new and it is assumed that there are many more older motors in the gas supply chain. Thus also older emission data used. NOx emissions could be underestimated as it is not known how many motors in the system use catalytic converters. For emissions concerning heavy metals refer to section on gas turbines.

```

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent

Dear Paul,

The original report (Spielmann et al., 2007) describes the datasets for version 2.0. These however were subject to change in the change from v2.1 to 2.2. The current dataset for "transport, passenger train, regional" is a combination of the ecoinvent version 2.2 datasets  “transport, regional train, SBB mix” and “operation, regional train, SBB mix”.  These values were introduced in the report of changes for 2.2 (Hischier, R. 2010, Documentation of changes implemented in ecoinvent Data v2.1 and v2.2) in Tab. 7.82 and Tab. 7.33 respectively. The report should explain the method of how these values were calculated. It can be found in the reports section of ecoQuery version 2 (Filename:  16-Changes-v2.2.pdf).

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent

Dear Tim,

I agree it would be nice to have a dataset for this, however at the moment we do not have any concrete plans of integrating eggs into the database. We do offer a dataset on chicken production (for poultry production) though, which may or may not be useful for your study but could serve you as a starting point.

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent

Hi,

Currently there are no heat mix datasets in ecoinvent for hot water on a country-level in the ecoinvent dataset. However, the database offers various datasets on heating equipment and fuels with which such a dataset could be constructed. Search the activity overview for fitting datasets. If you search for “heat, “ in the “name” column you will find all the heat products and their respective activities.

Best regards, Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst

Dear Gertri,

At the moment there is no process on the recycling of polypropylene in the database. Polypropylene gets treated by several other processes (incineration, open burning, open dump, landfill etc.).

Best regards, Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst

Dear Cristina,

The datasets are both available on ecoQuery, try to search for them again. Please keep in mind that the search is sensitive to spelling mistakes, commas, etc. With the following search strings you should find them successfully:

• concrete production, 20MPa, ready-mix, with Portland cement
• concrete production, 20MPa, self-construction, with Portland cement

Also be sure to select v3.6 as these are recent datasets.

The information in the "Included Activity End" section of the metainformation gives an idea of what the difference between the two activities is:

Ready-mix: This activity ends before the delivery of concrete at the construction site. The dataset includes the whole manufacturing processes to produce ready-mixed concrete, internal processes (material handling and mixing) and infrastructure. The dataset does not include: - the transport of concrete in a mixing truck.

Self-construction: This activity ends after concrete mixing at the construction site. The dataset includes the whole manufacturing processes to produce self-construction concrete, but does not include the on site mixing infrastructure. Water for washing is included. Concrete losses of 3% are considered.

The general comment indeed is inconsistent with the numbers in the “self-construction” datasets. For “ready-mix” the numbers in the general comment match the dataset after taking the 3% loss into account. However, the numbers in the exchanges are correct. Thank you for pointing this out. We will look into it and adapt the dataset.

For more information on the datasets, their differences and how they were created you can refer to the Published Source cited in the dataset "Gmünder S., Myers N., Belizario F., Laffley J., Rubio L., (2018). Life Cycle Inventories of Cement, Concrete and Related Industries - Colombia and Peru. ecoinvent Association, Zürich, Switzerland". This report is freely accessible here (after registration).

Best regards,

Johannes Müller, Junior Data Analyst, ecoinvent

Dear Brandon,

To your first question, why the characterization factor for the midpoint indicator “water depletion, unspecified natural origin” is 0.001: This is because some elementary exchanges are in kg while others are in m3. If you check the documentation on CFs for ReCiPe (2008, Page 107) the unit for unspecified natural origin is given in m3/kg, thus the value of 0.001.

To what happened to the the water depletion indicator: Because the ecoinvent database is not completely water balanced, the best approximation for the water depletion indicator is to use water-to-air exchanges, as these are the main contributors to the indicator and deliver the best results. We are aware that this is not a perfect solution, but it is intentional and no error.

Kind regards,

Johannes MüllerJunior Data Analyst, ecoinvent