About methods 1.5.5 openLCA

[ldominguez]

Hi everyone,

I have been using openLCA since February 2015 with Ecoinvent database 2.2 and LCIA methods package from Ecoinvent. But for problem qith laptot I have to reinstall the programme and start by the beginning my project (but I have my previous resultr recorded). So, the problem is the results of my project (with Recipe Midpont (H)) are different if I use the "Database for openLCA 1.4 & 1.5 (zolca file, 19 MB) with normalisation and weighting factors. Last update: March 22nd, 2016" or the "LCIA methods that I had used last year". The main change is in water depletion and marine eutrophication. With the update LCIA methods th WD increases from 0.0035 m3 to 5.35 m3 and the marine eutrophication decrases from 1.38 to 0.0018. I have been analyzing the process and flow contributors to WD and I realize that now "water,turbine use...." is taken into account, while the before methods only take into account "water, river". There also are a lot of differences between process and flows contribution in marine eutrophication.

So, somebody can tell me where I can get information about the update or maybe can explain these changes....Because it's important to my project. In fact, now the WD is the category with the greatest impact and before does not have importance for my project. And I have to explain these aspects to my PHD boss.

Thank you.

Best regards.

[aciroth]

Hello,
I never heard "PhD boss" before -
there are some mistakes in the ecoinvent methods, related to units (m³ and kg) which we corrected in our method pack, you see these differences in the impact methods. This should give you an explanation. We are providing the ecoinvent methods unchanged in order to allow everybody to recreate the LCIA results from ecoinvent, but have corrected these mistakes in our method pack. I do not understand why you need to reinstall openLCA again, basically you can just apply a different LCIA method in the calculation.
Best wishes,
Andreas