IREC

The study carried out for the Institut de Recerca de l’Energia de Catalunya (IREC) was a prospective Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) of micro-energy harvesting and storage technologies framed in the HARVESTORE project. The HARVESTORE project aims to power IoT nodes from ubiquitous heat and light sources by using nano-enabled micro-energy systems. Using disruptive concepts from the emerging Nanoionics and Iontronics disciplines, which deal with the complex interplay between electrons and ions in the nanoscale, a radically new family of all-solid state micro-energy sources able to harvest and store energy at the same time will be developed.

In the framework of the prospective LCA, the Sustainability Accounting and Optimization area of the BETA Technological Centre analysed two different micro-energy harvesting and storage nodes designs, Photoelectrochemical HS (P-HS) and Ion-Gated Thermoelectric HS (IGT-HS), from an environmental point of view. Also, we compared the performance of the HARVESTORE nodes with current used alternatives such as batteries and supercapacitors.