• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.156-165
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• 2017

This study quantitatively assessed the environmental impacts of fuel cell (FC) systems by performing life cycle assessment (LCA) and analyzed their energy efficiencies based on energy return on investment (EROI) and electrical energy stored on investment (ESOI). Molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) system and polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system were selected as the fuel cell systems. Five different paths to produce hydrogen ($H_2$) as fuel such as natural gas steam reforming (NGSR), centralized naptha SR (NSR(C)), NSR station (NSR(S)), liquified petroleum gas SR (LPGSR), water electrolysis (WE) were each applied to the FCs. The environmental impacts and the energy efficiencies of the FCs were compared with rechargeable batteries such as $LiFePO_4$ (LFP) and Nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH). The LCA results show that MCFC_NSR(C) and PEMFC_NSR(C) have the lowest global warming potential (GWP) with 6.23E-02 kg $CO_2$ eq./MJ electricity and 6.84E-02 kg $CO_2$ eq./MJ electricity, respectively. For the impact category of abiotic resource depletion potential (ADP), MCFC_NGSR(S) and PEMFC_NGSR(S) show the lowest impacts of 7.42E-01 g Sb eq./MJ electricity and 7.19E-01 g Sb eq./MJ electricity, respectively. And, the energy efficiencies of the FCs are higher than those of the rechargeable batteries except for the case of hydrogen produced by WE.