Environmental assessment of solar thermal collectors with integrated water storage

Solar thermal systems feed on a “clean” energy source. However, a complete analysis of the environmental performance of solar thermal collectors should take into account not only their operation phase, but also their whole life cycle. This paper reports the results of a life cycle assessment of a solar thermal collector with integrated water storage. The study, carried out by means of SimaPro 5.0 software, aims at drawing a thorough environmental profile of the collector, highlighting the most relevant contributions to the total impacts, measured by means of a set of aggregate environmental indicators. In order to evaluate the possible improvements of the system configuration, several sensitivity analyses were performed, for different phases of its life cycle. Thanks to this optimization, the reduction of the impacts could be up to 40%. Environmental pay back times were calculated as well. Their values range from 5 to 19 months, remarkably lower than the expected lifespan of the systems (15-20 years).