Abstract
Globally, the issue of climate change due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is now broadly acknowledged as one of the major challenges facing humankind that requires urgent attention. Accordingly, considerable efforts on clean energy technologies and policy recommendations have been developed to address this challenge. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have been touted to play a role in achieving a reduction in global GHG emissions, offering numerous advantages including higher efficiencies and reduced emissions, over other conventional methods of energy generation. The increasing recognition and emphasis on fuel cells as a representative power generation system of the future has raised concerns over their environmental profile. Extensive research regarding the environmental profile of current structures of SOFCs can be found in the literature, but none consider the use of new materials to achieve lower environmental impacts. This research fills the gap and presents a comparison of the environmental profile of three SOFC structures: a commercially available structure, and two intermediate temperature structures, one using erbia-stabilised bismuth oxide electrolytes and a proposed structure using strontium-doped sodium bismuth titanate electrolytes. Using a functional unit of kg/100 kW of power output for each of the SOFC structures (excluding the interconnects), within a hybrid life cycle analysis framework, the environmental hotspots across the supply chains of each SOFC type are identified, quantified and ranked. The results show the use of these novel material combinations leads to a reduction in embodied materials and toxicological impact but higher electrical energy consumption during fabrication, in comparison to commercial SOFCs. The findings support the move to reduce the operating temperatures of SOFCs using these novel material architectures, which leads to an overall reduction in environmental impact due to the lower operational energy requirement of the chosen material constituents.
Highlights
In a world where rising energy demand competes with calls for green, sustainable energy to reduce the threat of climate change [1], the fuel cell presents a promising alternative to the combustion process for fuel production
While the electrical energy requirements of the novel Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) materials structures increases in comparison to the commercial SOFCs, we argue that achieving lower materials impact has greater influence than energy consumption
The main aim of investigating and commercialising novel solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) material structures is to enable them to function at lower temperatures
Summary
In a world where rising energy demand competes with calls for green, sustainable energy to reduce the threat of climate change [1], the fuel cell presents a promising alternative to the combustion process for fuel production. SOFCs are efficient, reduce carbon dioxide emissions in comparison to conventional methods and eliminate the emissions of other pollutants such as NOx and SOx altogether [3,4,5] They have the potential to reach efficiencies of over 85% (lower heating value- LHV) in combined heat and power applications [6] and are currently in use as auxiliary power units for trucks and cars and in military applications [7]. With an operating temperature range of 800–1000 °C, these commercial SOFCs undergo thermal stresses during their cycle of operation and this often leads to catastrophic failure These high operating temperatures require ceramic interconnects which are expensive and must undergo complex manufacturing processes [10].
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