Suchergebnisse

Tesis Doctoral le?da en la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos de Madrid en 2020. Directores de la Tesis: Javier Dufour And?a y Diego Iribarren Lorenzo ; The transition towards a sustainable energy sector, still dominated by fossil fuels, requires the integration of alternative solutions to fulfil the increasing global energy needs. Hydrogen is seen as a strategic energy carrier characterised by decisive strengths with respect to conventional fuels. For instance, it can be ?extracted? from a wide range of feedstocks through several technologies by using energy in different forms (heat, light, electricity). However, techno-economic barriers need to be overcome for the deployment of hydrogen as a new energy actor. In this respect, economic, environmental and social implications shall be taken into account, and following a life-cycle perspective is a fundamental requirement to comprehensively check the overall performance. When evaluating options, sustainability criteria (that involve the pressure on the environment, economic feasibility, and social implications as a set of interrelated aspects) should be an important part of the strategies of governments and companies. However, general solutions to the complex problem of assessing sustainability do not exist, and the singularities of a given system usually require a tailor-made methodological framework. In light of this, this thesis focuses on developing a methodological framework for the sustainability assessment of hydrogen energy systems following a life-cycle perspective. The advances refer to straightening methodological consistency at the level of both sustainability dimensions (when jointly evaluating the environmental, economic and social life-cycle performance of a single case study) and case study (when comparing different case studies). The procedure to define a common Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) framework for hydrogen energy systems started with an extensive literature review on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social ...

End-of-Life (EoL) technologies and strategies are needed to support the deployment of fuel cells and hydrogen (FCH) products. This article explores current and novel EoL technologies to recover valuable materials from the stacks of proton exchange membrane fuel cells and water electrolysers, alkaline water electrolysers, and solid oxide fuel cells. Current EoL technologies are mainly based on hydrometallurgical and pyro-hydrometallurgical methods for the recovery of noble metals, while novel methods attempt to recover additional materials through efficient, safe and cost-competitive pathways. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the reviewed EoL technologies are identified under techno-economic, environmental and regulatory aspects. Beyond technologies, strategies for the EoL of FCH stacks are defined mainly based on the role of manufacturers and recovery centres in the short-, mid- and long-term. In this regard, a dual role manufacturer/ recovery centre would characterise long-term scenarios within a potential context of a well-established hydrogen economy. ; The HyTechCycling project has received funding from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No. 700190. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Hydrogen Europe and N.ERGHY.