Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing of a SOFC system for distributed power generation

• Assessment of 230 kW SOFC system from a life cycle perspective.
• LCA–LCC toolbox developed to compare SOFC and MGT.
• Eight sustainability indicators are identified as drivers for decision making.
• Investment cost is a bottle-neck for SOFC systems.
• SOFC systems show environmental–economic benefits for household applications.

Through the combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in a dedicated toolbox, the aim of this paper is to evaluate both potential environmental impacts and potential costs of the operation of a 230 kW Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) system. LCA and LCC methodologies have been here applied for a comparison with a conventional technology, i.e. Micro Gas Turbine (MGT) for distributed power generation applications. A contribution analysis for the SOFC system fuelled with natural gas, reveals that the fuel supply is responsible of a relevant share of the environmental impact. The same system, fed with biogas, shows environmental benefits on global and regional impact categories, depending on the power energy mix used during the digestion process. For both SOFC and MGT systems, the life cycle hotspots are identifiable in the operation stage for the global warming category, and in the fuel supply stage for all the remaining impact categories. The LCA–LCC comparison between SOFC and MGT systems, based on a toolbox embedding a set of 8 sustainability indicators for decision making, shows that the SOFC system presents environmental and economic benefits in a life cycle perspective, particularly for household application. However, cost results to be the most sensitive bottle-neck for benchmarking with traditional energy systems. Therefore, the SOFC system is preferable to the conventional MGT technology when the sustainability of investment cost is demonstrated, whilst a wide advantage in environmental performance along the life cycle has been proved.