Commonly used materials constituting the core components of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), including the balance‐of‐plant, were classified according to the EU criticality methodology with an additional assessment of hazardousness and price. A life‐cycle assessment (LCA) of the materials potentially present in PEMFC systems was performed for 1 g of each material. To demonstrate the importance of appropriate actions at the end of life (EoL) for critical materials, a LCA study of the whole life cycle for a 1‐kW PEMFC system and 20,000 operating hours was performed. In addition to the manufacturing phase, four different scenarios of hydrogen production were analyzed. In the EoL phase, recycling was used as a primary strategy, with energy extraction and landfill as the second and third. The environmental impacts for 1 g of material show that platinum group metals and precious metals have by far the largest environmental impact; therefore, it is necessary to pay special attention to these materials in the EoL phase. The LCA results for the 1‐kW PEMFC system show that in the manufacturing phase the major environmental impacts come from the fuel cell stack, where the majority of the critical materials are used. Analysis shows that only 0.75 g of platinum in the manufacturing phase contributes, on average, 60% of the total environmental impacts of the manufacturing phase. In the operating phase, environmentally sounder scenarios are the hydrogen production with water electrolysis using hydroelectricity and natural gas reforming. These two scenarios have lower absolute values for the environmental impact indicators, on average, compared with the manufacturing phase of the 1‐kW PEMFC system. With proper recycling strategies in the EoL phase for each material, and by paying a lot of attention to the critical materials, the environmental impacts could be reduced, on average, by 37.3% for the manufacturing phase and 23.7% for the entire life cycle of the 1‐kW PEMFC system.
The selection of most appropriate design and technological solutions to produce certain mould should capture technical performance, economical issues as well as environmental impacts occurred during the mould life cycle. In the paper an approach is presented to support the selection of alternative mould design solutions in the early design stage. It includes the use of Life Cycle Assessment methodology, Life Cycle Cost methodology and is supported by numerical simulations. The approach is applied to a case study where three mould designs for production of the same plastic product were compared. Finally, general conclusions regarding the resource efficient injection moulding processes are presented.
This paper summarises the results of experimental investigations of a commercial alkaline water electrolyser used for hydrogen production to balance decentralised electricity production from renewables. Experiments have been conducted on an alkaline water electrolyser operating at a pressure range up to 25 bar g and having a maximum production capacity of 15 Nm³ hydrogen per hour. In stationary conditions, the energy efficiency of an electrolytic cell has been calculated, and the characteristics of the electrolyser stack has been described with an empirical equation. The energy efficiency of the entire system and hydrogen losses within the boundaries of the system have been determined. Experimental results show that the energy efficiency of an electrolytic cell at typical operating conditions ranges between 73 and 83%, and the energy efficiency of the entire system is between 50 and 60%. Hydrogen losses within the boundaries of the system, compared to the total produced amount of hydrogen, are between 10 and 25%, depending of operating conditions.
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