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USEPA / ElectricityLCI

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What is the meaning of a process with zero inputs and outputs? #218

Open dt-woods opened 6 months ago

dt-woods commented 6 months ago

I was going to implement the "zero product flow" filter, when I can across an unusual process.

So, I went back to look at the 2016 electricity baseline (as downloaded from the Fed Commons) and I cross-checked what appeared to be a weird process with a lot of input and output exchanges, but all values are marked as zero (except the main product output).

The process I'm referring to is 'coal extraction and processing - Central Appalachia, BIT, Processing' (de122d83-123a-331e-85bc-bc14026410c6).

It appears to just produce 'coal, processed, at mine' from nothing (see screenshot below). Is this okay or does this need special attention for the library feature?

Screen Shot 2023-12-19 at 18 07 01
m-jamieson commented 6 months ago

The way this is supposed to work is that the coal inventory function looks in the inventory csv for an exact match - CA-B-U (central appalachia, bituminous, underground mined coal). There is logic in there to fill in gaps as necessary (or there's supposed to be). CA-B-P would be a gap - we don't count processing facilities as "mine type". The intention in this case is to use a weighted average of CA-B-U and CA-B-S profiles, since a processing plant could be getting it's bituminous coal from underground or surface mines.

m-jamieson commented 6 months ago

The filling in of missing scenarios starts here: https://github.com/USEPA/ElectricityLCI/blob/2232c41f2cb4fd333ad59c8710aa55906e6a7ed3/electricitylci/coal_upstream.py#L325

dt-woods commented 6 months ago

Since there are values in both CA-B-U and CA-B-S, I'm guessing this isn't working properly, then.