IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v154y2020icp532-541.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Life cycle assessment of an innovative cogeneration system based on the aluminum combustion with water

Author

Listed:
  • Pini, Martina
  • Breglia, Giovanni
  • Venturelli, Matteo
  • Montorsi, Luca
  • Milani, Massimo
  • Neri, Paolo
  • Ferrari, Anna Maria

Abstract

The continuous increase in primary energy demand and the decrease in the availability of fossil fuels were led to a condition of energy security concerns. In this context, hydrogen can be seen as a promising energy carriers. This paper investigated the environmental performance, through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, of a combined production system of hydrogen and power based on aluminum combustion with water. This system is potentially able to produce the integrated generation of four energy sources: hydrogen, high temperature steam, heat and work at the turbine shaft. The LCA results indicated that the life-cycle phases that determine the main environmental impact are: liquid aluminum production, transports of liquid aluminum and electricity consumption. In addition, the major release of carbon dioxide emissions is due to the use of natural gas in the aluminum production phase. In order to determine the “greener” alternative and support the system design choices, according to the eco-design perspective, different system configurations were investigated. In particular, the reaction mechanism between first primary aluminum powder and water steam and then secondary aluminum at liquid state and water steam. The environmental comparison highlighted that the former layout increases by more than 78% compared to latter one.

Suggested Citation

  • Pini, Martina & Breglia, Giovanni & Venturelli, Matteo & Montorsi, Luca & Milani, Massimo & Neri, Paolo & Ferrari, Anna Maria, 2020. "Life cycle assessment of an innovative cogeneration system based on the aluminum combustion with water," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 532-541.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:154:y:2020:i:c:p:532-541
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.046
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148120303712
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.046?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Malinauskaite, J. & Jouhara, H. & Ahmad, L. & Milani, M. & Montorsi, L. & Venturelli, M., 2019. "Energy efficiency in industry: EU and national policies in Italy and the UK," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 255-269.
    2. Mercati, Stefano & Milani, Massimo & Montorsi, Luca & Paltrinieri, Fabrizio, 2012. "Design of the steam generator in an energy conversion system based on the aluminum combustion with water," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 686-694.
    3. Lior, Noam, 2010. "Sustainable energy development: The present (2009) situation and possible paths to the future," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 3976-3994.
    4. Kothari, Richa & Buddhi, D. & Sawhney, R.L., 2008. "Comparison of environmental and economic aspects of various hydrogen production methods," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 553-563, February.
    5. Mazloomi, Kaveh & Gomes, Chandima, 2012. "Hydrogen as an energy carrier: Prospects and challenges," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 3024-3033.
    6. Shkolnikov, E.I. & Zhuk, A.Z. & Vlaskin, M.S., 2011. "Aluminum as energy carrier: Feasibility analysis and current technologies overview," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(9), pages 4611-4623.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Venturelli, Matteo & Falletta, Ermelinda & Pirola, Carlo & Ferrari, Federico & Milani, Massimo & Montorsi, Luca, 2022. "Experimental evaluation of the pyrolysis of plastic residues and waste tires," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 323(C).
    2. Hren, Robert & Vujanović, Annamaria & Van Fan, Yee & Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír & Krajnc, Damjan & Čuček, Lidija, 2023. "Hydrogen production, storage and transport for renewable energy and chemicals: An environmental footprint assessment," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    3. Violeta Motuzienė & Kęstutis Čiuprinskas & Artur Rogoža & Vilūnė Lapinskienė, 2022. "A Review of the Life Cycle Analysis Results for Different Energy Conversion Technologies," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-26, November.
    4. Busch, P. & Kendall, A. & Lipman, T., 2023. "A systematic review of life cycle greenhouse gas intensity values for hydrogen production pathways," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    5. Marco Vacchi & Cristina Siligardi & Erika Iveth Cedillo-González & Anna Maria Ferrari & Davide Settembre-Blundo, 2021. "Industry 4.0 and Smart Data as Enablers of the Circular Economy in Manufacturing: Product Re-Engineering with Circular Eco-Design," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-20, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Khan, Mohd Atiqueuzzaman & Ngo, Huu Hao & Guo, Wenshan & Liu, Yiwen & Zhang, Xinbo & Guo, Jianbo & Chang, Soon Woong & Nguyen, Dinh Duc & Wang, Jie, 2018. "Biohydrogen production from anaerobic digestion and its potential as renewable energy," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 129(PB), pages 754-768.
    2. Jamey Davies & Stephanus P. Du Preez & Dmitri G. Bessarabov, 2022. "The Hydrolysis of Ball-Milled Aluminum–Bismuth–Nickel Composites for On-Demand Hydrogen Generation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-22, March.
    3. Bergthorson, Jeffrey M. & Yavor, Yinon & Palecka, Jan & Georges, William & Soo, Michael & Vickery, James & Goroshin, Samuel & Frost, David L. & Higgins, Andrew J., 2017. "Metal-water combustion for clean propulsion and power generation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 186(P1), pages 13-27.
    4. Bergthorson, J.M. & Goroshin, S. & Soo, M.J. & Julien, P. & Palecka, J. & Frost, D.L. & Jarvis, D.J., 2015. "Direct combustion of recyclable metal fuels for zero-carbon heat and power," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 368-382.
    5. Su, Ming & Hu, Haiping & Gan, Jianchang & Ye, Wenhua & Zhang, Wenhua & Wang, Huihu, 2021. "Thermodynamics, kinetics and reaction mechanism of hydrogen production from a novel Al alloy/NaCl/g-C3N4 composite by low temperature hydrolysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    6. Garra, Patxi & Leyssens, Gontrand & Allgaier, Olivier & Schönnenbeck, Cornelius & Tschamber, Valérie & Brilhac, Jean-François & Tahtouh, Toni & Guézet, Olivier & Allano, Sylvain, 2017. "Magnesium/air combustion at pilot scale and subsequent PM and NOx emissions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 578-587.
    7. Fayaz, H. & Saidur, R. & Razali, N. & Anuar, F.S. & Saleman, A.R. & Islam, M.R., 2012. "An overview of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(8), pages 5511-5528.
    8. Ludvik Viktorsson & Jukka Taneli Heinonen & Jon Bjorn Skulason & Runar Unnthorsson, 2017. "A Step towards the Hydrogen Economy—A Life Cycle Cost Analysis of A Hydrogen Refueling Station," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-15, May.
    9. Burton, N.A. & Padilla, R.V. & Rose, A. & Habibullah, H., 2021. "Increasing the efficiency of hydrogen production from solar powered water electrolysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    10. Ünal, Berat Berkan & Onaygil, Sermin & Acuner, Ebru & Cin, Rabia, 2022. "Application of energy efficiency obligation scheme for electricity distribution companies in Turkey," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    11. Kothari, Richa & Singh, D.P. & Tyagi, V.V. & Tyagi, S.K., 2012. "Fermentative hydrogen production – An alternative clean energy source," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 2337-2346.
    12. Roopnarain, Ashira & Rama, Haripriya & Ndaba, Busiswa & Bello-Akinosho, Maryam & Bamuza-Pemu, Emomotimi & Adeleke, Rasheed, 2021. "Unravelling the anaerobic digestion ‘black box’: Biotechnological approaches for process optimization," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    13. Tolga Balta, M. & Dincer, Ibrahim & Hepbasli, Arif, 2010. "Energy and exergy analyses of a new four-step copper–chlorine cycle for geothermal-based hydrogen production," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 3263-3272.
    14. Georgiadou, Maria Christina & Hacking, Theophilus & Guthrie, Peter, 2012. "A conceptual framework for future-proofing the energy performance of buildings," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 145-155.
    15. Balcombe, Paul & Speirs, Jamie & Johnson, Erin & Martin, Jeanne & Brandon, Nigel & Hawkes, Adam, 2018. "The carbon credentials of hydrogen gas networks and supply chains," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 1077-1088.
    16. Chien-Ming Wang & Tsung-Pao Wu, 2022. "Does tourism promote or reduce environmental pollution? Evidence from major tourist arrival countries," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 3334-3355, March.
    17. Dutta, Rohan & Ghosh, Parthasarathi & Chowdhury, Kanchan, 2011. "Customization and validation of a commercial process simulator for dynamic simulation of Helium liquefier," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 3204-3214.
    18. Qiang Yue & Xicui Chai & Yujie Zhang & Qi Wang & Heming Wang & Feng Zhao & Wei Ji & Yuqi Lu, 2023. "Analysis of iron and steel production paths on the energy demand and carbon emission in China’s iron and steel industry," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(5), pages 4065-4085, May.
    19. Trowell, K.A. & Goroshin, S. & Frost, D.L. & Bergthorson, J.M., 2020. "Aluminum and its role as a recyclable, sustainable carrier of renewable energy," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    20. Lee, Boreum & Park, Junhyung & Lee, Hyunjun & Byun, Manhee & Yoon, Chang Won & Lim, Hankwon, 2019. "Assessment of the economic potential: COx-free hydrogen production from renewables via ammonia decomposition for small-sized H2 refueling stations," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1-1.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:154:y:2020:i:c:p:532-541. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.