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

International audienceThe rapid growth of the electronic sector together with the electric vehicle development areresponsible for the constantly growing energy demand. At the same time the humanity faces theproblems related to the fossil fuel resources exhaustion and to the pollution and global warmingcaused by fossil fuels burning. The renewable energy sources seem to be a promising solutionnevertheless the majority of them are intermittent and cannot thus guarantee stable and reliableenergy supply. However these sources can be used to produce hydrogen – an energy carrier. Thisgas can then serve as reactive in fuel cells to produce electricity.Fuels cells operate by the means of anon-combustive electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen yielding water vapor andproducing electricity and heat.This reaction is catalyzed both on the cathode and the anode by Ptnanoparticles 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], theuse of so-called clean vehicles (both electric and hydrogen powered fuel cells) is currently largelypromoted. However,taking into account the non-renewable character of Pt catalyst and the supplyproblems related to its scarcity an important rate of Pt catalyst recycling should be reached in order toguarantee a real sustainable solution.Thus several alternatives of a low temperature Pt recyclingprocess were developed in this work specifically for Pt catalyst from spent PEM fuel cells. Moreoverthe 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