International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Vol.44, No.25, 12872-12879, 2019
End-of-life of fuel cell and hydrogen products: A state of the art
The Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH) technologies will play an important role in a future where greenhouse gasses emissions need to be reduced. Nevertheless, a huge implementation of these technologies must be addressed taking into account an eco friendly scope not only from the manufacturing perspective but also from the end-of-life scope. A classification of the materials has been done considering the importance of each of them. To obtain a complete overview of the problem, different criteria have been compared: the cost, the scarcity of the material and the affections these materials can cause not only to the environment but also to the humans. This classification has been used to identify which are the most critical materials. Moreover, other transversal issues have been studied as the regulations that apply to FCH technologies from a paneuropean perspective and the strategies to face the end-of-life of this equipment. A holistic point of view has been considered in order to see how the process of dismantling and recycling faces different problems and which milestones to achieve in a future with a deep market penetration are. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.