Comparative environmental life cycle assessment of conventional energy storage system and innovative thermal energy storage system

Borbala Rebeka David,Sean Spencer,Jeremy Miller,Sulaiman Almahmoud,Hussam Jouhara

doi:10.1016/j.ijft.2021.100116

Abstract

As policies have been implemented globally to limit the production of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the effects of climate change, the generation of electricity by renewable technologies has started to increase. The development of sustainable energy storage solutions has also become more important. The continued use of conventional chemical batteries presents environmental issues such as heavy metal pollution and the use of unsustainable resources. An environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted to analyse the environmental impact of an innovative Thermal Battery (TB) and was compared with the impact of a Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery (LIPB) using a “cradle-to-gate” approach to establish the system boundaries. The study used the findings from existing literature to determine the environmental impact of the LIPB. The life cycle inventory for the TB was constructed based on a model and available literature. In this regard, the two products were compared on 10 impact categories, and the results indicated that the TB performed better in 8 categories on average. The highest impact observed from the TB was in terrestrial ecotoxicity, where it emitted above 7000 times more than the LIPB, amounting to approximately 0.0153 after normalisation. The highest normalised environmental load in the study was indicated to be in the category of marine ecotoxicity by the LIPB at 0.27, which was significantly higher than any load for the TB. Overall, the results obtained are encouraging for the TB, but it is recommended that a field study is completed to verify the assumptions made in this paper and to achieve a better comparability with studies conducted similarly.

Highlights

Climate change and the implementation of new environmentally focused legislation has shifted the focus for scientists and engineers to wards more climate-neutral solutions
The ReCiPe midpoint (H) 2016 model was used to analyse the impact of the thermal battery (TB) production within the system boundary outlined in Section 2.5, whereas the life cycle assessment of the lithium iron phosphate battery (LIPB) conducted by Wang et al [28] utilised the ReCiPe midpoint (H) 2008 version
It should be noted that only a few studies have analysed different types of thermal and electrical storage systems which was a lithium iron phosphate battery (LIPB)

Summary

Introduction

Climate change and the implementation of new environmentally focused legislation has shifted the focus for scientists and engineers to wards more climate-neutral solutions. The Paris Agreement is the first legally binding global agreement of its kind, which has been signed by almost 190 parties and influences the participating countries’ inter nal policies considerably such as the European Green Deal [2,3]. Another significant driver for the development of sustainable energy storage is the increasing proportion of renewable energy generation. The binding global agreement further pushes industries to develop and install technologies, in a bid to meet emission targets

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Conclusion