Location: CH - Switzerland
This data represents the service of wood chipping to output one kg of dry mass wood chips. The dataset represents the use of a chipper in sawmill and is equivalent to the direct chipping in a profile chipper (see below)
The process chain in a sawmill is a net of interlinked processes; the process structure depends on the individual design and technologies in place for each sawmill. The structuring of the sawmilling processes is based on the identification of the core processes in a sawmill that are attributable to several co-products (such as upstream processes like forestry and transport of logs to the sawmill) sorting, storing and the sawing of the (debarked) log. Other processes are attributable directly to one of the co-products such as the chipping of residual wood (either after sawing or as part of the profile chipping), the chipping of the bark (the "debarking") or the suction of saw dust as collection and internal transport.
Undefined unit processes (UPRs) are the unlinked, multi-product activity datasets that form the basis for all of the system models available in the ecoinvent database. This is the way the datasets are obtained and entered into the database by the data providers. These activity datasets are useful for investigating the environmental impacts of a specific activity (gate-to-gate), without regard to its upstream or downstream impacts.