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Modelling Transport in Markets or Directly?

Posted: 15 Apr 2016 23:38
by edsacayon
Hello

I would like to understand how to model a transport process a little better. In the examples on the PET bottle, the weight of the materials (kg) is multiplied by the distance (km). And it is used directly on a transport process.

For my case study, I am modelling coal transportation distance in ship from Colombia to Guatemala (1,700 km). From Mines to Power Plant (electricity generation). The intermediate process is a market for coal. Being the reference flow hard coal (1kg) then I assume I that the transport input required by the market dataset would be ( 1kg x 1,700 km) or (1.7 T*km) of a freight ship. I removed all other transport inputs as all the coal used in Guatemala is imported from Colombia.

Is it as simple as that or do I need to consider other variables (size of ship or average load)? Would it be better to remove Market and link ship transport process directly to power plant dataset?

thanks!

Edgar Eduardo

Re: Modelling Transport in Markets or Directly?

Posted: 16 Apr 2016 13:19
by aciroth
Hi Edgar,
good question - when modeling with ecoinvent, it is indeed "as simple as that", as you write. Ecoinvent so far does not allow to modify e.g. the payload of a truck, therefore you simply multiply the distance and the weight to get tkm which is the unit of freight transport processes. implicitly ecoinvent assumes 50% payload for trucks e.g.. In GaBi data sets, the payload can be modified asa parameter, and you can also model your own transport process which considers the payload. For some transport means, ecoinvent has different data sets for diffrent sizes, e.g. for trucks.
Hope this helps!
Andreas