D8.1.3 Report on LCA: Prospective Environmental Assessment of ASTEP System

The report presents the overall life cycle assessment of the ASTEP system which includes the new materials data for the platform structure for MAND and the electrical cabinets for the ASTEP system for both MAND and AMTP. It was conducted using SimaPro 9.2 software. The results revealed that the operation of the ASTEP system over a period of 30 years had the most significant environmental impact, followed by the manufacturing of the system, transportation and end-of-life waste disposal of the system. The GHG emissions from the operation of the ASTEP system is due to the electricity used for its pumps, actuators and sensors to operate the system. For the manufacturing phase, the thermal energy storage (TES) components had the highest environmental impact. This was primarily due to the greater quantity of materials and energy required for TES manufacturing compared to the other components. The report also covers the final stage of D8.1.3 that focuses on the environmental prediction model for the ASTEP system using machine learning technique. An ANN model was developed in MATLAB to predict the environmental impact of the ASTEP system for both end-users, MAND and AMTP. The variables reported in the literature regarding the environmental impact of solar thermal plants were used as input parameters for the ANN model (Table 3). These variables include the plant capacity, direct normal irradiation (DNI), energy consumption, annual energy generated, number of TES hours, carbon intensity, plant lifespan, plant capacity factor. This database was placed in Excel and the ANOVA function was selected to assess the independent variables that significantly (P < 0.05) impact the dependent variable which is GHG emissions of the plants. The statistically significant confidence level was set at 95%. The results showed that the statistically (P < 0.05) significant variables are the energy consumption and the carbon intensity. This indicates that energy consumption and carbon intensity have significant influence on the GHG emissions of the solar thermal plants.