Environmental profile of thermoelectrics for applications with continuous waste heat generation via life cycle assessment

Highlights: • Environmental impacts of thermoelectric modules, based on 5 materials, is studied. • First-ever process-level inventory is developed for thermoelectric modules. • Module production harms environment via high energy and toxic constituent usage. • All modules show large ecological benefits upon constant use in coal power plants. • End-of-life treatment has near-zero effect on ecological impact of thermoelectrics. Over the past few decades, rigorous efforts have been undertaken to develop novel thermoelectrics (TEs) with high conversion efficiencies. However, poor TE device efficiencies and use of scarce and toxic constituent elements in major TEs raises valid questions about their ecological effectiveness. We evaluate this efficacy by investigating environmental performance of seven TE modules, spanning five different TEs, on a diverse range of impacts (including toxicity and scarcity) over their life cycle (cradle-to-grave). Exhaustive inventory is developed for all modules, particularly their production and end-of-life stages, in the first-ever exercise of its kind till date, to assess their benefits for applications involving constant waste heat emission. Three end-of-life scenarios are considered to determine ecological benefits and pitfalls of recycling TEs, a first in LCA literature on thermoelectrics. The results show the dominance of specific constituent elements and large processing-related electricity consumption on impacts caused by production for all modules. Over their life cycle, TE modules are seen to exhibit large positive environmental benefits, barring some exceptions, highlighting their substantial eco-credentials independent of the TE used. Also, barring circular economy approach in some cases, no end-of-life treatment is observed to significantly influence modular environmental impacts. Subsequent calculations show ecological benefits from TEs to be comparable with those from commonly used renewables like solar and wind energy, with the findings repeated under scenario-based sensitivity analysis despite 50% reduction in conversion efficiency and 15% lowering in usage duration, further validating their ecofriendly potential. Simultaneously, two key challenges that hinder large-scale application of TEs – marginal ecological benefits (even on converting high fraction of waste heat to electricity) and high costs – are pointed out. This work concludes by highlighting the urgent need for addressing major negative contributors to production-related impacts of this platform to boost its prospects for commercial application and transform its ecofriendly potential into reality.