ACL EN SISTEMAS DE ALMACENAMIENTO DE ENERGÍA: BATERÍA IONES DE LITIO Y SISTEMA DE HIDRÓGENO

Abstract

Currently, electricity demand is increasing and would continue growing in the future. The primary electricity generation power plants in the world are based on fossil fuels.  To fulfill this increasing demand, there has been a prolific increase in electricity production which causes a direct or indirect harmful impact on primary sources available worldwide. The emissions generated from the fossil-fuel-based electricity generation plants can be controlled by replacing them with renewable energy sources, but the environmental impacts associated with the supporting energy storage systems must not be ignored in this scenario. This study is conducted to assess the environmental effects associated with energy storage systems by doing a comparative life cycle assessment, in which only two energy storage systems are considered: lithium-ion battery and hydrogen energy storage system. The functional unit was chosen as one vehicle-kilometer. The cradle-to-grave approach was selected from which the EOL phase is excluded. LCI for both product systems is based on secondary data sources. The openLCA sustainability software version 1.3 and the ECOINVENT database are used to execute the work. The ReCiPe endpoint level LCIA method is selected to evaluate the results. The results obtained depicted that lithium-ion battery has shown inferior results compared to hydrogen energy storage system. The hydrogen energy storage system showed less environmental impact than the lithium-ion battery system. Solar and wind energy sources led to better results than the grid mix when all the three electricity sources are supplied during the use phase of two product systems.