Techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment on proton conductor ceramic based technologies for various materials, configurations, applications and products

The increasing world´s energy consumption, especially when related with the exploitation of fossil fuels with the associated emissions, has been introducing adverse global environmental impacts. A possible solution to these issues can derive from the exploitation of alternative source of energy such as the renewable energy systems which, though, introduce issues associated with intermittency and lack of programmability. In order to exploit efficiently and sustainably the energy produced by these sources, the Proton conductor ceramic cells could be employed in order to perform the energy conversion and, this technology, has received in the recent years attention as a promising alternative for clean energy systems also thanks to the lower operating temperatures compared to the most common SOC technologies. In this thesis, specifically, a techno-economic analysis for proton conductor ceramic cells based systems has been implemented. Stack and balance of plant have been considered for various applications, with multiple outputs, such as: hydrogen or electricity production; ammonia synthesis with direct nitrogen. hydrogen and water injection into the cell; ammonia synthesis with direct water and nitrogen injection in the two electrodes. Different materials for electrodes, such as BSCF/LSCF, and for the electrolyte, such as BZCY or BZCYYb, have been considered as some of the most used currently in literature. The performances of the cell have been evaluated following a literature review regarding recent publications in order to provide a comprehensive overview with best and worst case scenarios evaluated exploiting a statistical approach on the data collected and available. For the economical evaluation capital and operating costs have both been considered. Final sensitivity analysis for the different economical and technical parameters have also been performed to evaluate the main drivers to tackle in order to improve the overall systems performances. Furthermore, in order to evaluate the environmental impact for the protonic conductor ceramic cell technologies the TEA has been coupled with a life cycle assessment, using UMBERTO software, considering the entire life cycle starting from the material extraction to its manufacturing, operation or end of life. From the LCA, the goal of assessing the environmental impact of new plants on a perspective point of view, taking into account different impact categories, was sought assessing also the global warming potential associated to different functional unit as well as allowing a direct comparison of stack differential layers such as electrodes and electrolytes.