Equipment description product development laboratories

Life cycle assessment of SOFC technology is still uncommon due to the relatively early stage in technical development. However, several studies have been performed since the end of the 1990s. Since there is a lack of standard commercial equipment that could serve as a basis and reference point for analysis, LCA studies mostly refer to hypothetical concepts and/or extrapolate from laboratory and early market prototypes to commercial units. While the first studies had only little access to operation data at aU (for the fuel cell system itself but also for production processes), the main effort was set in the assessment of inventory data using assumptions, simplifications, and correlations [79, 80]. The main outcomes of these studies were the identification of weak points and the setting of benchmarks for further development. With more information about fuel cells available today and a simultaneous advancement in LCA methodology, the studies became more reliable and detailed, regarding system description [81] as well as the assessment of environmental impacts coimected with inputs and outputs [82]. Especially the extensive data of these two studies found their way to commercial databases for LCA [83] and thereby became available to LCA practitioners. In 2005, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU)... 

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