Environment and LCA

The Environment tab reports waste, emissions and wastewater for every batch, and a life-cycle assessment (LCA) per functional unit. Inventories can be exchanged with SimaPro as CSV files.

Waste and emissions

The top of the tab (Environmental Impact) shows, per batch:

• Total waste and E-factor (kg waste per kg main product);
• COD with BOD₅, Suspended solids, VOC emitted, CO₂ vented and Water intensity;
• a table of every waste and emission stream with mass, volume, COD, BOD₅, TSS and VOC, and a waste chart.

What makes a stream count as waste or emission is its Classification (Raw material, Revenue, Waste, Emission, Intermediate or Credit), set in the stream’s Inspector or context menu.

Vent emissions

Vessel procedures have a Vent & emissions section in the Inspector. The emission model can be Off, EPA (displacement, heating, sweep) or Raoult headspace venting. Vent policies are open, relief or vacuum (with an air-leak correlation whose coefficients you can edit, or a set rate), and an optional vent condenser recovers condensables.

Wastewater and energy

Tasks ▸ Energy, heat integration & wastewater… has four tabs: Heat integration (pinch analysis and heat-exchanger pairing), Utilities, fuels & power (boilers, turbines, CHP, fuels and make-up water), Wastewater & discharge (discharge limits) and Component data (TKN, TP, TOC, heating values, acid/base data). The Water quality (mg/L) and energy section of the tab shows stream concentrations and pH against the discharge limits.

Life-cycle assessment

The Life-cycle assessment section of the Environment tab shows:

• the basis: “Per functional unit · allocation allocation (x % to product)”;
• cards for GWP100, PMI (process mass intensity), E-factor, Unmapped flows and Datasets without factors;
• an Impact category selector with a contribution chart;
• Impacts per functional unit for the ReCiPe 2016 midpoint (H) categories: global warming (GWP100), stratospheric ozone depletion, ionising radiation, ozone formation (human health and ecosystems), fine particulate matter, terrestrial acidification, freshwater and marine eutrophication, terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecotoxicity, human carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic toxicity, land use, mineral and fossil resource scarcity, and water consumption;
• the Inventory per functional unit, by section, with each flow’s dataset, amount, unit and status (unmapped, factors unset or ✔).

The inventory is built from the simulation: raw materials, utilities and electricity, wastes and vents, all scaled to the functional unit.

LCA settings, datasets and mappings

Click Datasets & mappings… in the LCA section, or choose Tasks ▸ LCA datasets & mappings…. The window has four tabs.

Settings

• Functional unit (kg of product), Product stream (by default the main product from the economics settings) and Counted component (whole stream or one component).
• Allocation: None (all to main product), Mass or Economic.
• Direct emissions: vents and emission streams as emissions to air.
• Wastewater: discharged untreated, so COD/BOD₅ go to water instead of treatment.
• Electricity: add the general and unlisted power load.
• SimaPro project and Product category for the export.
• Import SimaPro process CSV…, Add upstream FlowState project… and Restore default library (see below).

Mappings link each FlowState flow (component, utility, waste) to a dataset, with a basis, a factor and an optional expression for strength or density conversions.

Dataset library holds the background datasets. Names must match SimaPro exactly. Each dataset has a platform id, a source, and impact factors. Only enter factors you can cite. A dataset without factors is marked unset (no values provided); it contributes zero to the impacts, and the inventory lines that use it are flagged as factors unset. It is still exported to SimaPro by name.

Parameters are scenario parameters, exported as SimaPro input parameters.

SimaPro export

Click ⬇ Export SimaPro CSV… in the LCA section. FlowState writes a SimaPro 9 process CSV, named “title - SimaPro process.csv”, containing the process with its inventory per functional unit, ready to import into a SimaPro project where the background datasets supply the impacts. From the command line: flowstate-cli lca my.flow --simapro out.csv.

SimaPro import

Import SimaPro process CSV… (on the Settings tab) reads a SimaPro process CSV. It adds the datasets it references to the library (with factors unset), derives mappings, and keeps the imported inventory for comparison with FlowState’s. From the command line: flowstate-cli lca-import my.flow process.csv.

Chaining projects

Add upstream FlowState project… turns the main product of another .flow project into a dataset whose impacts per kg come from that project’s own LCA. Use it to chain, for example, a glucose syrup process into a fermentation process that consumes the syrup.

About the built-in library. Dataset names follow SimaPro, ecoinvent and Agri-footprint naming exactly, so an exported inventory links to the right background processes in SimaPro. The library only carries impact factors stated in a cited source (for example the SWEET study’s cradle-to-gate results for starch sweeteners, and IPCC AR6 GWP100 values for greenhouse gases). All other datasets start unset: enter factors from your own LCA database to complete the assessment.