UC Irvine

The promotion of renewable energy in electric energy grids is motivated by the adverse effects from the use and production of conventional energy sources. To accommodate large amounts of renewable penetration, the deployment of energy storage systems is required to manage variable renewable resources such as wind and solar. In recent years, utility-based energy systems have been undergoing a significant transformation to increasingly integrate energy storage systems. However, these devices are diverse in terms of not only their use-phase performance, but also the design parameters and processing materials used for their production and waste generated throughout their life cycle. Thus, sustainability assessment toward those various energy storage systems is urgently needed. In contrast, advancing customized sustainability assessment to cover the rarely addressed sustainability issues on emerging energy storage systems is also important.

In this dissertation, we have conducted comprehensive sustainability assessment on several energy storage systems from the perspectives of environmental and human health impact, chemical hazard, economic feasibility, and decision making. More specifically, a comprehensive investigation of the potential environmental and human health impact, chemical hazards, and economic feasibility associated with the production of three flow batteries: vanadium redox, zinc bromide, and all-iron flow batteries; is performed through life cycle impact assessment, chemical hazard assessment and techno-economic analysis. Further, the toxicity and hazard of processing chemicals used for the manufacturing of low band gap polymers in organic photovoltaics were assessed through a chemical hazard assessment approach. In addition, a multi-criteria decision analysis is applied to select different chemical toxicity data sources in order to promote a more comprehensive chemical hazard assessment.

Overall, this dissertation aims to provide insight into developing a strategy for comprehensive evaluation of the production and deployment of sustainable energy systems, with a focus on the effects of the product design and materials selection choices on the environmental footprint, hazard potential and economic feasibility of these novel energy devices. This strategy is designed to guide the selection of energy technologies in order to help utilities and regional governments to support their renewable energy penetration goals while minimizing environmental externalities.