Environmental assessment of a new generation battery: The magnesium-sulfur system

As environmental concerns mostly drive the electrification of our economy and the corresponding increase in demand for battery storage systems, information about the potential environmental impacts of the different battery systems is required. However, this kind of information is scarce for emerging...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Tomasini Montenegro, Claudia, Peters, Jens|||0000-0002-4802-7806, Baumann, Manuel, Weil, Marcel, Zhao-Karger, Zhirong, Wolter, Christopher
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Alcalá (UAH)
Repositorio:e_Buah Biblioteca Digital Universidad de Alcalá
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ebuah.uah.es:10017/46629
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10017/46629
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.est.2020.102053
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Life cycle assessment
Energy storage
Post-lithium battery Lithium-ion battery and climate change
Magnesium battery
Environmental science
Chemistry
Medio Ambiente
Química
Descripción
Sumario:As environmental concerns mostly drive the electrification of our economy and the corresponding increase in demand for battery storage systems, information about the potential environmental impacts of the different battery systems is required. However, this kind of information is scarce for emerging post-lithium systems such as the magnesium-sulfur (MgS) battery. Therefore, we use life cycle assessment following a cradle-to-gate perspective to quantify the cumulative energy demand and potential environmental impacts per Wh of the storage capacity of a hypothetical MgS battery (46 Wh/kg). Furthermore, we also estimate global warming potential (0.33 kg CO2 eq/Wh) , fossil depletion potential (0.09 kg oil eq / Wh), ozone depletion potential (2.5E-08 kg CFC-11/Wh) and metal depletion potential (0.044 kg Fe eq/Wh), associated with the MgS battery production. The battery is modelled based on an existing prototype MgS pouch cell and hypothetically optimised according to the current state of the art in lithium-ion batteries (LIB), exploring future improvement potentials. It turns out that the initial (non-optimised) prototype cell cannot compete with current LIB in terms of energy density or environmental performance, mainly due to the high share of non-active components, decreasing its performance substantially. Therefore, if the assumed evolutions of the MgS cell composition are achieved to overcome current design hurdles and reach a comparable lifespan, efficiency, cost and safety levels to that of existing LIB; then the MgS battery has significant potential to outperform both existing LIB, and lithium-sulfur batteries.