| Summary: | 1 figure.-- Work presented at the NanoteC19 conference, International Conference on Carbon Nanosciene and Nanotechnology, 27th-30th august 2019, Zaragoza (Spain). Graphene production may reach very soon an industrial level depending on the application in which it will be used. In order to evaluate the sustainability of this massive production, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to obtain the environmental impact of graphene production by different routes [1,2]. A detailed material inventory is compiled, the cumulative energy demand is calculated and the environmental impact is evaluated for several categories, such as resources depletion, climate change (via Green-House Gases emissions), ocean acidification, or human health risks. The cumulative energy demand is found to have a cap value between 20.7 and 68.5 GJ/Kg (Figure 1, left), a relatively high value, while impact in other categories is lower, and materials inventory does not include critical or strategic materials other than graphite itself [3]. The LCA methodology is applied in this work with special focus on chemical exfoliation/reduction from graphite oxide and its use as electrode in organic solar cells [4]. Then, the relatively large cumulative energy demand of graphene within the device is balanced by the extension of operative lifetime of the solar cells which incorporate some variations of the graphene-based electrode (Figure 1, right). Peer reviewed
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