Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of Solar Selective Thin Films by Electrodeposition and by Sol-gel Techniques

Abstract

LCA is quantitative method to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product o service, including relevant stages of the cycle and includes mining, manufacturing and distribution until use and disposal. In this work it is analyzed the LCA of solar selective coatings from manufacturing to the coatings in the life of a solar collector.In this work, the life cycle analysis of solar selective coatings of black cobalt, obtained by a) electrodeposition and b) sol-gel technique is performed. The selective coatings improve the efficiency of solar collectors due their optimized optical response: High solar absorptance and low thermal emittance, which results in an additional crop of solar energy. The life cycle analysis of these films, show that the electro-coating technique is potentially more favorable for manufacturing the solar collectors, in comparison with dipping sol-gel technique, which is accepted to have a favorable LCA.LCA in conceptual terms can be divided into the inventory and analysis stages. The inventory builds a matrix describing the use of materials and energy and emissions in the life cycle. The set builds a matrix describing the use of materials and energy is called the life cycle inventory (LCI). For each considered system is calculated the energetic consumption, kWh/year of energy required to manufacture a unit area of selective coatings prepared by both techniques, starting from fundamental components and amount of materials involved in kg/m2, it is calculated the kWh/year supplied by each system assessing the lifetime of the coatings, resulting in a matter and energy balance as well as the environmental impacts of the coatings under analysis.