Life Cycle Assessment for Proton Conducting Ceramics Synthesized by the Sol-Gel Process

In this report, the environmental aspects of producing proton conducting ceramics are investigated by means of the environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The proton conducting ceramics BaZr_0.8Y_0.2O_3-δ (BZY), BaCe_0.9Y_0.1O_2.95 (BCY10), and Sr(Ce_0.9Zr_0.1)_0.95Yb_0.05O_3-δ (SCZY) were prepared by the sol-gel process. Their material requirements and environmental emissions were inventoried, and their energy requirements were determined, based on actual production data. This latter point makes the present LCA especially worthy of attention as a preliminary indication of future environmental impact. The analysis was performed according to the recommendations of ISO norms 14040 and obtained using the Gabi 6 software. The performance of the analyzed samples was also compared with each other. The LCA results for these proton conducting ceramics production processes indicated that the marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential (MAETP) made up the largest part, followed by fresh-water aquatic ecotoxicity potential (FAETP) and Human Toxicity Potential (HTP). The largest contribution was from energy consumption during annealing and calcinations steps.