Life cycle assessment of a recycling process - case study of platinum catalyst recycling from spent PEM fuel cells - Mines Saint-Étienne
Conference Papers Year : 2017

Life cycle assessment of a recycling process - case study of platinum catalyst recycling from spent PEM fuel cells

Abstract

The rapid growth of the electronic sector together with the electric vehicle development are responsible for the constantly growing energy demand. At the same time the humanity faces the problems related to the fossil fuel resources exhaustion and to the pollution and global warming caused by fossil fuels burning. The renewable energy sources seem to be a promising solution nevertheless the majority of them are intermittent and cannot thus guarantee stable and reliable energy supply. However these sources can be used to produce hydrogen – an energy carrier. This gas can then serve as reactive in fuel cells to produce electricity.Fuels cells operate by the means of a non-combustive electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen yielding water vapor and producing electricity and heat.This reaction is catalyzed both on the cathode and the anode by Pt nanoparticles based catalyst. The presence of Pt makes this solution rather expensive. Nevertheless taking into account that nearly 25% of EU CO2 emissions are related to transport [1], the use of so-called clean vehicles (both electric and hydrogen powered fuel cells) is currently largely promoted. However,taking into account the non-renewable character of Pt catalyst and the supply problems related to its scarcity an important rate of Pt catalyst recycling should be reached in order to guarantee a real sustainable solution.Thus several alternatives of a low temperature Pt recycling process were developed in this work specifically for Pt catalyst from spent PEM fuel cells. Moreover the environmental impact of the process was assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and the results were used to choose the less impacting recycling alternative.
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Dates and versions

emse-01574052 , version 1 (11-08-2017)

Identifiers

  • HAL Id : emse-01574052 , version 1

Cite

Lucien Duclos, Lenka Švecová, Guillaume Mandil, Valérie Laforest, Pierre-Xavier Thivel. Life cycle assessment of a recycling process - case study of platinum catalyst recycling from spent PEM fuel cells. 16ème Congrès de la Société Française de Génie des Procédés, Jul 2017, Nancy, France. ⟨emse-01574052⟩
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