Producing energy with water as only direct emissions at tailpipe is an attractive concept behind fuel cells. The expensive platinum catalyst has plagued the design of fuel cells because the environmental and economic performance is diminished by the high platinum demand. Replacing carbon black with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) allows reducing the amount of platinum by enlarging the catalytic active surface. The aim of this work was to use life cycle assessment to compare the environmental performance of two Fuel Cell (FC) systems, a conventional electrocatalyst using carbon black as supporter for the platinum and an electrocatalyst using MWCNT as supporter for the platinum. Industrial data was collected for the MWCNT production (Nanothinx, Greece) and the production of the electrocatalyst, while all other components of the FC rather refer to a technically sensible option than to a specific product. Environmental impacts were evaluated with Ecoindicator 99. First results demonstrate that platinum causes most environmental impacts in a FC unit (40% all of environmental impacts), even though its mass (0.0003%) is irrelevant. The production of the MWCNT as supporter for the platinum is connected with higher environmental burden than the production of carbon black (Figure 1). However, this difference is overcompensated by far with the platinum savings which leads to an overall benefit for the FC unit with MWCNT of 40% compared to the FC with CB as supporter. Figure 1. Mass share and the environmental impacts (EI99) for both types of fuel cells. The damage is depicted relative to the damage of the components containing MWCNT. EC (electrocatalyst); GDL (gas diffusion layer); MEA (membrane electrode assembly).

Environmental impacts of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and platinum in fuel cell technology

247th National Meeting (2014)

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