TotalEnergies PhD thesis “Regionalizing ecotoxicological characterization factors towards more reliable prospective impact assessment of photovoltaic systems”
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We are looking for a doctoral student for a 36-month thesis to develop a methodology that allows to take spatial specificities, especially in the context of silicon and metal’s ecotoxicity, as well as prospective technological developments into account in the LCA of PV systems with a special focus on perovskite on silicon tandems.
The specific objectives are:
– To develop a life cycle impact assessment method allowing for regionalized ecotoxicological impact estimates of metals found in perovskite on silicon PV tandem systems
– To describe current and future PV systems by means of parameterized LCA models with a special focus on the end-of-life stage of the considered PV systems
– To evaluate the LCA of PV systems based on the developed methodology and systems: The PhD candidate will work on the development of the LCA methodology at two different levels. The first level relates to the life cycle inventory, where the candidate will develop parameterized models of the considered PV systems, applying a special focus on the end-of life stage. The second level is linked to the impact assessment, where the candidate will develop a method to spatially characterize the potential environmental impacts of metals used in the life cycle of the PV systems considered: perovskite on silicon tandem, and a single junction silicon as the reference PV system.
For the life cycle inventory, the candidate will start by settling on the PV systems to consider, then continue by identifying and describing the life cycle stages to be included in the LCA of the considered PV systems, before developing and describing end-of-life scenarios. The description of these systems will rely on parameters to ensure their flexibility and follow general principles of prospective LCA. Combined with currently available life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods, these inventories will allow prospective impact assessments of the considered PV systems.
The PhD candidate will go further than applying available LCIA methods by developing a regionalized characterized ecotoxicological impact assessment method for silicon and metals. The method will be operationalized for metals found in the considered PV systems (including silicon), meaning that characterization factors will be developed, but will be generic enough to be applied in other contexts. For this part, the PhD candidate will first review available ecotoxicological impact assessment methods for metals. In a second step, the PhD candidate will formulate strategies to improve the reliability and spatial representativity of the ecotoxicological LCIA method for metals. Finally, the PhD candidate will operationalize one or several of these strategies for the metals found in the considered PV systems to evaluate the case study(ies).
PhD
To be eligible for the TotalEnergies PhD Scholarship,
You are fond of research & development and wish to join an international company at the heart of energy transition.
You recently graduated in MSc in Environmental Sciences or equivalent.
You are bilingual in English and have a professional French.
You have acquired skills in LCA methodology and software (Brightway, openLCA, Simapro), photovoltaic systems (tandem and PV waste management), chemistry (potential ecotoxicological impacts of metals will be a plus) and have a background on Applied Mathematics and Statistics.
You have programming skills in Python or in Matlab or R.
You are dynamic, have a scientific curiosity and communication and synthesis skills.
So, do not wait anymore, apply for this thesis !
ALL
France
1
The PhD candidate will benefit from an industrial as well as academic environment to conduct his thesis, being supervised by a team from TotalEnergies/IPVF and a team from O.I.E. (Observation Impacts Energy) from Mines Paris Tech.
3 years
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This post was last modified on September 13, 2021 1:37 pm