ELCD data to SimaPro ecospold using conversion tool

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BartD
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 Jul 2013 09:55

ELCD data to SimaPro ecospold using conversion tool

Post by BartD » 15 Jul 2013 12:22

Dear OpenLCA community,

I recently started playing with the OpenLCA software and data conversion tool. One thing I tried, was to use the data conversion tool (v 3.0) to convert the ELCD 3.0 database to SimaPro compatible ecospold v1 files (and import those in SimaPro).

However, I encountered an issue when I tried to convert the entire database, and subsequently import the ecospold files in SimaPro. Besides the typical errors (such as non-recognized units in SP, which are easy to fix), there was also a more systemic issue. The conversion generates a number of processes with identical process names, which causes the import to fail, as SimaPro database structure cannot handle this. It seems that some "attributes" get lost during the conversion. For example: "electricity mix, EU-27, <1kV" will be converted to simply "electricity mix".

I am not an expert in how data is stored in ELCD/ EcoSpold files, but it seems that information on region and technology are stored in seperate data fields while at least in the SimaPro compatible ecospold, this information should be included in the main process name (which is possible in the CSV option of the conversion tool, but the tool does not allow direct conversion from ELCD to CSV files).

Conversion from ELCD to ecospold 2 and then to SimaPro compatible CSV fixes this issue, but results in other errors (certain wastes are listed as co-products).

Does anyone have an idea on how to fix this issue? Is this an error in the conversion tool or did I do something wrong?

Also, is there any difference between the ELCD 2.0 dataset (already available in SimaPro) and the "new" ELCD 3.0? The JRC website is not very clear on what actually has changed (except for improved review).

Kind regards,

Bart Durlinger

aciroth
Posts: 750
Joined: 09 May 2010 23:28

Re: ELCD data to SimaPro ecospold using conversion tool

Post by aciroth » 18 Nov 2013 01:01

Hello Bart,
Thanks for bringing this up, good point; we will consider it in a next version, then recognising SimaPro 8. Sorry that I am replying really late. Is it still relevant for you?
Regarding ELCDIII, there are quite some new processes, and some have been updated. The number of elementary flows has drastically increased, and now a "matching" set of LCIA methods is available.
Best wishes,
Andreas

BartD
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 Jul 2013 09:55

Re: ELCD data to SimaPro ecospold using conversion tool

Post by BartD » 28 Nov 2013 11:49

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for replying, and yes it is still relevant! We are currently creating new datasets, that need to use ELCD data as background. So having the latest data in SimaPro would be great. Any ideas about when a new version of the converter will be released?

Regards,

Bart

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