Flow

Everything that can be an input or output of a process (e.g. a substance, a product, a waste, a service etc.)

Properties

@type

Inherited from Entity.@type

@id

Inherited from RefEntity.@id

name

Inherited from RefEntity.name

description

Inherited from RefEntity.description

category

Inherited from RootEntity.category

lastChange

Inherited from RootEntity.lastChange

tags

Inherited from RootEntity.tags

version

Inherited from RootEntity.version

cas

A CAS number of the flow.

flowProperties

The flow properties (quantities) in which amounts of the flow can be expressed together with conversion factors between these flow flow properties.

flowType

The type of the flow. Note that this type is more a descriptor of how the flow is handled in calculations.

formula

A chemical formula of the flow.

isInfrastructureFlow

Indicates whether this flow describes an infrastructure product. This field is part of the openLCA schema because of backward compatibility with EcoSpold 1. It does not really have a meaning in openLCA and should not be used anymore.

location

The location of the flow. Normally the location of a flow is defined by the process location where the flow is an input or output. However, some data formats define a location as a property of a flow.

synonyms

A list of synonyms but packed into a single field. Best is to use semicolons as separator as commas are sometimes used in names of chemicals.

Python class stub

The snippet below shows the names of the properties of the corresponding Python class of the olca-schema package. Note that this is not the full class definition but just shows the names of the class and its properties.


@dataclass
class Flow:
  id: str
  cas: str
  category: str
  description: str
  flow_properties: List[FlowPropertyFactor]
  flow_type: FlowType
  formula: str
  is_infrastructure_flow: bool
  last_change: str
  location: Ref
  name: str
  synonyms: str
  tags: List[str]
  version: str

JSON example

{
  "@type": "Flow",
  "@id": "4a40cb39-e306-3649-b6da-ca061e384e23",
  "name": "electricity, high voltage, at grid",
  "category": "electricity/supply mix",
  "flowType": "PRODUCT_FLOW",
  "location": {
    "@type": "Location",
    "@id": "28840420-4e3d-3522-a930-8317344a285d",
    "name": "Poland"
  },
  "flowProperties": [
    {
      "@type": "FlowPropertyFactor",
      "isRefFlowProperty": true,
      "conversionFactor": 1.0,
      "flowProperty": {
        "@type": "FlowProperty",
        "@id": "f6811440-ee37-11de-8a39-0800200c9a66",
        "name": "Energy"
      }
    }
  ]
}