Supporting the ecodesign of novel Solid Oxide Eletrolyzer architectures for hydrogen production

Master project

Description

The project is part of NOAH2 European research project. The goal of the NOAH2 Project is to provide a sustainable, cost-competitive, flexible, and durable stack technology for hydrogen production at temperatures < 700°C by developing innovative electrodes, cell, and stack designs. NOAH2 will significantly boost electrolysis performance and durability of cells & stacks beyond State-of-the-Art (SoA), while reducing critical raw materials (CRM) and cost of manufacturing using environmentally friendly and well-established large scale production routes for solid oxide technology. The aim of the present study is to make the LCA of the Solid Oxide Eletrolyser (SOE) technology and identify main contributors, processes, and materials. Firstly, a literature review of the recent life cycle studies of monolithic SOE will be carried out to determine a baseline inventory and the key parameters. Then a LCA and a sensitivity analysis will be performed to underline the influence of the key parameters. The objective is to shed light on the environmental hotspots across the life cycle stages and point out where researchers need to improve the design of the technology in order to reduce the environmental footprint through an ecodesign process.

Project tasks

  1. Perform a literature review of state-of-the-art SOE technologies with a focus on SOE monolithic technology and (b) Identify the main contributors and key parameters influencing the potential impacts of SOE
  2. Perform a life cycle assessment of the SOE monolithic technology and compare its performance with a baseline SOE technology
    1. Define the scope of the study, collect inventory data and generate the model of the respective product systems to be modeled on OpenLCA.
    2. Compute the impact profile and identify the main contributors in term of life stages, processes, and flows of each technology and compare one to each other
  3. Perform a sensitivity and uncertainty analysis to assess the robustness of the results
  4. Generate recommendations to inform the ecodesign process of the novel technology

Supervision and conditions

  • Prof EPFL: F. Maréchal IPESE Energypolis, Sion
  • Supervision: Manuele Margni Professor HES-SO Valais Wallis, invited fellow at EPFL and his scientific collaborators
  • Location: Energypolis, Sion
  • Application to: manuele.margni@hevs.ch