Life cycle assessment of gas atomised sponge nickel for use in alkaline hydrogen fuel cell applications

JOURNAL OF POWER SOURCES

卷:243

Article

Wilson, Benjamin P.^1,2  Lavery, Nicholas P.^1,3  Jarvis, David J.³  Anttila, Tomi⁴  Rantanen, Jyri⁴  Brown, Stephen G. R.⁵  Adkins, Nicholas J.⁶ 

[1] Swansea Univ, Coll Engn, Ctr Adv Sustainable Mfg Technol ASTUTE, Digital Technium, Swansea SA2 8PP, W Glam, Wales

[2] Aalto Univ, Dept Chem, Aalto 00076, Finland

[3] European Space Agcy, Estec, NL-2201 AZ Noordwijk, Netherlands

[4] Oy Hydrocell Ltd, Jarvenpaa 04430, Finland

[5] Swansea Univ, Coll Engn, Mat Res Ctr, Swansea SA2 8PP, W Glam, Wales

[6] Univ Birmingham, Coll Engn & Phys Sci, IRC Mat Proc, Birmingham B15 2TT, W Midlands, England

关键词: Sponge (Raney) nickel;    Gas atomisation (GA);    Platinum electrode;    Alkaline fuel cell (AFC);    Cast and crush (CC);    Life cycle assessment (LCA);   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jpowsour.2013.05.186

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

This paper presents a cradle-to-grave comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of new gas atomised (GA) sponge nickel catalysts and evaluates their performance against the both cast and crush (CC) sponge nickel and platinum standards currently used in commercial alkaline fuel cells (AFC). The LCA takes into account the energy used and emissions throughout the entire life cycle of sponge nickel catalysts ranging from the upstream production of materials (mainly aluminium and nickel), to the manufacturing, to the operation and finally to the recycling and disposal. Through this assessment it was found that the energy and emissions during the operational phase associated with a given catalyst considerably outweigh the primary production, manufacturing and recycling. Primary production of the nickel (and to a lesser extent dopant materials) also has a significant environmental impact but this is offset by operational energy savings over the electrode's estimated lifetime and end of life recyclability. From the results it can be concluded that higher activity spongy nickel catalysts produced by gas atomisation could have a significantly lower environmental impact than either CC nickel or platinum. Doped GA sponge nickel in particular showed comparable performance to that of the standard platinum electrode used in AFCs. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free