A common sustainability issue, arising in production systems, is the efficient use of resources for providing goods or services. With the increased interest in a hydrogen (H 2 ) economy, the life-cycle environmental performance of H 2 production has special significance for assisting in identifying opportunities to improve environmental performance and to guide challenging decisions and select between technology paths. Life cycle impact assessment methods are rapidly evolving to analyze multiple environmental impacts of the production of products or processes. This study marks the first step in developing process-based streamlined life cycle analysis (LCA) of several H 2 production pathways combining life cycle impacts at the midpoint (17 problem-oriented) and endpoint (3 damage-oriented) levels using the state-of-the-art impact assessment method ReCiPe 2016. Steam reforming of natural gas, coal gasification, water electrolysis via proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEM), solid oxide electrolyzer cell (SOEC), biomass gasification and reforming, and dark fermentation of lignocellulosic biomass were analyzed. An innovative aspect is developed in this study is an analysis of water consumption associated with H 2 production pathways by life-cycle stage to provide a better understanding of the life cycle water-related impacts on human health and natural environment. For water-related scope, Water scarcity footprint (WSF) quantified using Available WAter REmaining (AWARE) method was applied as a stand-alone indicator. The paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each production pathway, identify the drivers of environmental impact, quantify midpoint environmental impact and its influence on the endpoint environmental performance. The findings of this study could serve as a useful theoretical reference and practical basis to decision-makers of potential environmental impacts of H 2 production systems.

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Mixed Mn-Co spinels are currently studied as protective coating materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells interconnects. Compositional changes in manganese cobaltites lead to modifications in the materials properties, such as sintering behaviour, thermal expansion and electrical conductivity, with advantages in the technological application. In this work, the effect of Fe, Cu and simultaneous Fe+Cu doping of Mn-Co spinels has been studied. Different oxide powder mixtures were prepared with a High Energy Ball Milling (HEBM) treatment, obtaining highly reactive oxides that easily form single spinel phase compounds by moderate heating. The effect of the composition is observed on high temperature stability of the spinel phase and on densification behaviour of the powders, greatly enhanced by copper addition. 2 Analyses carried out on sintered pellets allow to observe simple relations among dopant concentration, thermal expansion and electrical conductivity. The combined effect is obtained in case of the simultaneous addition of multiple dopants. An appropriate composition can be therefore designed to obtain a material characterized by enhanced sintering behaviour, high electrical conductivity and tailored thermal expansion to fulfil the application requirements.

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Intermediate Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (IT-SOFC) technology offers interesting opportunities in the panorama of a larger penetration of renewable and distributed power generation, namely high electrical efficiency at manageable scales for both remote and industrial applications. In order to optimize the performance and the operating conditions of such a pre-commercial technology, an effective synergy between experimentation and simulation is fundamental. For this purpose, starting from the SIMFC (SIMulation of Fuel Cells) code set-up and successfully validated for Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells, a new version of the code has been developed for IT-SOFCs. The new release of the code allows the calculation of the maps of the main electrical, chemical, and physical parameters on the cell plane of planar IT-SOFCs fed in co-flow. A semi-empirical kinetic formulation has been set-up, identifying the related parameters thanks to a devoted series of experiments, and integrated in SIMFC. Thanks to a multi-sampling innovative experimental apparatus the simultaneous measurement of temperature and gas composition on the cell plane was possible, so that a preliminary validation of the model on local values was carried out. A good agreement between experimental and simulated data was achieved in terms of cell voltages and local temperatures, but also, for the first time, in terms of local concentration on the cell plane, encouraging further developments. This numerical tool is proposed for a better interpretation of the phenomena occurring in IT-SOFCs and a consequential optimization of their performance.