openLCA Tutorial

February 18, 2016

1 About the tool

openLCA is an open source tool developed by GreenDelta in 2007 for Life Cycle Assessment
(LCAs) and sustainability assessment studies. LCA is a popular tool used by businesses to
identify opportunities to reduce resource use and emissions, optimize their business approach
and make informed decisions based on economic and environmental criteria. openLCA is
one of the most comprehensive tools available today, to perform this task and is widely used
by many industries and NGOs. The link to download the tool is available here. This tool is
also available in the computer labs (Room 110-120 CBEC).

2 Download & Installation

openLCA is available for Mac, Linux and for both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows version.
Installation procedure varies for different operating systems but is quite straight forward.
More information on the installation procedure is available in the following link.
Once you download and install the software, the navigation screen will be empty that
looks like this (Figure 1). The navigation pane is where information on the different projects
you create will be stored. The first step is to create a new database. Right click on the
navigation pane and click on ”New database”. Give a name to your database and ensure
that the ”Local” radio button is checked. Creating local projects will make data sharing and
transfer easier. Next, click on the ”Complete reference data” in the database content option
and click on ”Finish”. Your new database will be visible in the navigation pane. You will
notice that the new database is almost empty, except for some inbuilt flows, flow properties
and unit groups.

3 Life cycle inventories and impact assessment meth-

ods
Once you create a new database, the next step is to download and import the Life Cycle
Inventory Database and the Impact Assessment Methods. These two datasets are required
to build your model in openLCA.

1
 Figure 1: Your first database in openLCA

3.1 Life cycle inventory database

The life cycle inventory database contains a set of input and output flows from different prod-
uct systems including material, energy and emissions flows. There are many free databases
from where you can download these life cycle inventories including the NREL (National Re-
newable Energy Laboratory), NEEDS (New Energy Externality Development for Sustain-
ability, European), ProBas(European) database. You can find a whole list of data sources
provided by openLCA in the link provided here. The most common one used in the U.S. is
the NREL database and they have a set of about 2000 elementary flows and 900 product
flows defined. The database can be downloaded from the NREL website. The dataset is also
available as a .zip file on Carmen, in case you have any issues downloading the dataset from
this link.
To import the life cycle inventory dataset into your database, right click on Process →
Import. In the dialog box that appears, choose Eco Spold 1 under the “File import” menu
and click next. To import the database, navigate to the folder location where the database
was downloaded, and click on the “NREL USLCI Database.zip” file and click next. Some of
the units in the NREL database is not compatible with the openLCA tool and these have
to be defined manually. Use the values given in Figure 2 to assign the missing units.
Alternatively, you can also import the Eco-invent database into openLCA. openLCA
versions 1.4.x does not support the xml file available in the ecoinvent website (v2.2 or lower)
directly. However, the openLCA nexus website has a version of the ecoinvent database that
is compatible with openLCA version 1.4. The commercial database can be downloaded from
the link available here.
Process data from SimaPro can also be converted to a csv format and imported into
openLCA. To import processes from SimaPro, the first step is to download the process that
you want to import into a “.csv” format. The next step is to import the csv file into an

2
 Figure 2: NREL - openLCA flow units

openLCA database. Right click on the database that you have created an click on import.
Choose the “SimaProCSV” option under the ”file import” folder and choose the “.csv” file
that you just exported from SimaPro. After the import, you will see the process under the
same category as in the SimaPro database.
Note: If you are using this tool for class projects, you should use the LCI database provided
by the NREL.

3.2 Impact Assessment Methods

Life Cycle Impact Assessment(LCIA) methods are necessary to analyze the impact inven-
tory obtained from an LCA model. Impact assessment methods establish a link between
emissions from manufacturing multiple products or operation of processes and its potential
environmental impacts. Each impact assessment method contains different impact categories
which are location specific. For example, CO2 emissions and N2 O contribute to global warm-
ing while emissions of H2 S or hydrogen sulfide gas can contribute to human toxicity. LCIA
methods quantify the environmental consequences of these emissions based on different char-
acterization factors. Going through the different impact categories in each method prior to
building the LCA model is advisable. More information on the different assessment methods
can be found here.

3
 The LCIA method pack available in the openLCA nexus is a comprehensive package of
different impact assessment methods including GaBi, ecoinvent 3, and the ELCD. Triangle
Life Cycle Assessment LLC in collaboration with GreenDelta have also developed a compre-
hensive package with different impact assessment methods that is applicable for a U.S LCI
database.
To download these impact assessment methods in openLCA, click on the LCIA methods
in the download page. Once you have it downloaded, you can import the database saved as
a .zolca file. “.zolca” files are unique extensions given to openLCA files and every time you
save or import your database, your files have to be in this format.
Right click on the Impact Assessment tab in the new database that you created and click
on import. Choose the “Database Import” option under the other subfolder. Now navigate
to the directory where the .zolca file was downloaded and click on finish.

4 Building the openLCA model

4.1 Distinguishing flows and processes in openLCA
Before you begin to build your model, here is a small clarification on the difference be-
tween flows and processes in openLCA. Flows and flow properties form the basis for building
openLCA models and performing the calculations. Industrial systems (in this case “Pro-
cesses”) in openLCA are an entity by itself with environmental and material inputs defined
by flows, and environmental and resource outputs quantified by different flows again. This
makes it easy to analyze the production of multiple products from a single process.

4.2 Building your model

Any LCA analysis begins with modelling the product system under study. Product systems
can be created in three different methods depending on the amount of data available and
user preferences.

4.2.1 Creating a product system from process data

Users can create a new product system from existing processes in openLCA. To create
a product system from process based data, choose the process system pertaining to your
problem. In the General Information tab, click on “Create product system” and click on
finish. Specify the functional unit for your study along with flow units in the reference tab.
You can keep track of your assumptions by making note of it in the description tab.
Once you have a product system defined, the model graph tab will display only the reference
process system.
To build the entire life cycle model including the upstream contributions, right click on
the Product system → Build Supply chain → Complete. Once this is done, click on the
“Expand all” in the product system to view the entire supply chain.
These connections can be tweaked according to user’s preference and based on the system
under study. This window is where most of the process modifications, editing and deletion
can be done according to the nature of the problem.

4
 Figure 3: Sample Process

To determine the life cycle impact, click on the “Calculate” button in the General In-
formation tab, and choose the method of allocation, the impact assessment method and the
normalization or weighting set and hit “Calculate”. openLCA calculates impact contribu-
tions from each step in the life cycle of a product system. The number and type of impact
category will depend on the type of impact assessment method selected by the user.

4.2.2 Manually adding processes

Another alternative to adding processes besides auto-connecting them will be to manually
connect flows in the model graph. This option is useful if you like to modify some flows in the
an existing product system to match your process description. This will be useful typically
when you will have to swap the type of resource and energy input to a process. Once you
build the supply chain for your process, you can manually add or remove connections in
the process network. Right click on the process that has to be tweaked and choose either
“remove connections” to remove a particular connection, “Search providers for” to search
for flows upstream to the given process or “Search recipients for” option to choose flows
downstream to the given system. To add a new process if a connection doesn’t exist, drag
and drop the reference process system from the Process tab in the navigation tool bar and
then build the connections by adding recipients and providers.

5 Sample Problem in openLCA

Here is simple example to compare the generation of 10 kwh of electricity from natural gas
and biomass.
Assume we have a process that requires 10 kWh of electricity from two sources - Biomass and
Natural gas. You want to compare the life cycle emissions for the production of electricity
from the two different resources.
Building the model:

5
You will have to create two different models to do this comparison. For defining a prod-
uct system for electricity from natural gas, click on the Process → Utilities → Fossil Fuel
Electric Power Generation. If you look into the Input/Output tab the first output flow is
the “Electricity, natural gas, at plant” process, which has a reference amount of 1 kwh here.
Remember, this is not where you define your functional unit.
If you wish to make some modifications to the input process, simply add a new process to the
inputs tab by clicking on the green plus menu to add a new input flow. Select the input flow
from the table and delete the existing process. For example, in the natural gas electricity
process, if the mode of transport for your process was truck instead of diesel powered train,
simply choose the required flow, and define the appropriate amount. The t*km(Tons*km)
will vary depending on the type of vehicle used for transportation and the tkm values have
to be calculated for the vehicle being used. You can explore more about the entire supply
chain network by expanding each process, and analyze all the flows back to the first step in
the entire supply chain.
Similarly, to create a product system for electricity from biomass, click on Flows and search
for “Electricity, Biomass, at plant” under the utilities tab. You will notice that, flows for
electricity from Biomass already exist for the North American region. To create a product

Figure 4: Product system for electricity from natural gas

system for both the models, click on the “Create product system” option in the General
Information tab. Give a name for your product system and click on finish. You will get
a window that appears like this Figure 4. To do an impact analysis calculation, click on
Calculate. Choose the type of allocation if any, the impact assessment method and click on
Calculate.
You can then import the data into an excel file for further calculations. Do the same for
the electricity from biomass process and compare the results of both processes in terms of
GHG emissions, criteria air pollutants, water requirements, etc. For some processes, there is
a possibility that flows do not exists. In this case, you will have to create flows to and from
processes depending on the amount of information you have. To do this, right click on Flow
→ Create new flow. Give a name for your flow, define the type of flow (Elementary flow,
product or waste) and a flow property as defined below in Figure 5.

6
 Figure 5: Defining a new process

6 Useful References
This is just a brief introduction to the tool. openLCA can be used to build complex systems
and analyze the life cycle impacts. A lot of case studies are available online for your reference.
Here are some useful manuals you can refer, to learn this tool.

1. Over view and first steps

2. OpenLCA user guide

3. A simple example for manufacturing and installing rooftop photovoltaic systems

4. Case study of a Beer Bottle

5. Comparison of Conventional vs. Organic Viticulture

6. A comparison of different LCA models - SimaPro, Eco-LCA and openLCA