ALBERT

Description: There is a common understanding that the environmental impacts of construction materials should be significantly reduced. This article provides a comprehensive environmental assessment within Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) boundaries for Ultra-High-Performance Concrete (UHPC) in comparison with Conventional Concrete (CC), in terms of carbon, material, and water footprint. Environmental impacts are determined for the cradle-to-grave life cycle of the UHPC, considering precast and ready-mix concrete. The LCA shows that UHPC has higher environmental impacts per m3. When the functionality of UHPC is considered, at case study level, two design options of a bridge are tested, which use either totally CC (CC design) or CC enhanced with UHPC (UHPC design). The results show that the UHPC design could provide a reduction of 14%, 27%, and 43% of carbon, material, and water footprint, respectively.

Description: The need for electrical energy storage technologies (EEST) in a future energy system, based on volatile renewable energy sources is widely accepted. The still open question is which technology should be used, in particular in such applications where the implementation of different storage technologies would be possible. In this study, eight different EEST were analysed. The comparative life cycle assessment focused on the storage of electrical excess energy from a renewable energy power plant. The considered EEST were lead-acid, lithium-ion, sodium-sulphur, vanadium redox flow and stationary second-life batteries. In addition, two power-to-gas plants storing synthetic natural gas and hydrogen in the gas grid and a new underwater compressed air energy storage were analysed. The material footprint was determined by calculating the raw material input RMI and the total material requirement TMR and the carbon footprint by calculating the global warming impact GWI. All indicators were normalised per energy fed-out based on a unified energy fed-in. The results show that the second-life battery has the lowest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and material use, followed by the lithium-ion battery and the underwater compressed air energy storage. Therefore, these three technologies are preferred options compared to the remaining five technologies with respect to the underlying assumptions of the study. The production phase accounts for the highest share of GHG emissions and material use for nearly all EEST. The results of a sensitivity analysis show that lifetime and storage capacity have a comparable high influence on the footprints. The GHG emissions and the material use of the power-to-gas technologies, the vanadium redox flow battery as well as the underwater compressed air energy storage decline strongly with increased storage capacity.