Upstream resource impact

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bscandanavia
Posts: 3
Joined: 14 Apr 2014 23:02

Upstream resource impact

Post by bscandanavia » 15 May 2014 22:38

Hello,

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how to produce a report that will list the total upstream elementary flow amount for any given material. For example, one would expect that a Analysis performed on an aluminum product would be able to report the total amount of bauxite ore mined upstream. Which is to say, a mined ore would constitute a much larger quantity by mass than the final aluminum product and it would seem that there would be some simple way of finding this number.

My initial assumption is that this number would be reported in the Upstream total columns in the Process results or Flow contributions of an Analysis report but this does not seem to be the case. Instead the number appears to list only the contribution amount within the confines of the product system (e.g bauxite consitutes 100% of the aluminum mass - though in fact it would be something like 400% in reality - bauxite ore yields roughly 25% aluminum). So I thought perhaps instead that a LCIA method such as eco-indicator 99 might be required as this includes an Impact category for "mineral extraction" - unfortunately this does not seem to produce any results at all.

I just require the total amounts for each of the elementary flows.
Is there some method that I am overlooking to perform this basic analysis?

Also, how do the LCIA methods determine which flows/processes relate to a given impact? For instance how would the eco indicato99 mineral extraction know to link a specific elementary flow with mineral extraction?

Thank you.

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

Re: Upstream resource impact

Post by aciroth » 16 May 2014 10:03

Hi,
this upstream aggregated elementary flow amount is provided in the "inventory results" tab, when you calculate a product system.
Best
Andreas
2014-05-16 10_02_24-openLCA 1.4 (beta 4).png
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