Elementary Flows

[KurtLeon]

If you create a new database including reference data, you get a lot of elementary flows. I was very surprised, that also many ecoinvent flows are using these elementary flows. Where do these elementary flows come from? And what will happen with my ecoinvent data, if I'm deleting these elementary flows?
Thank you very much for you reply.

[aciroth]

The reference flows in openLCA are a combination of flows from ecoinvent, ILCD, and other important databases.

ecoinvent flows are using these elementary flows

- do you mean ecoinvent *processes* ? If yes, then yes, that's correct and makes sense since then an LCIA method recognises them. You can't delete flows that are used in a process. If you remove them from a process too, well then the process is incomplete (or, you add a similar flow that you created on your own). Not sure if this answers your question.