A master programme thesis from Aalborg University
Eco Design for Sustainable Power Electronic Converters: Master's Thesis
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2025
Submitted on
2025-05-28
Pages
215 pages
Abstract
Global e-waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams, with a total of 62 Mt being discarded in 2022 and a projected amount of 82 Mt by 2030. Power electronic converters are not designed with end-of-life dismantling in mind, but instead to reach high efficiency, power density and low cost in production and maintenance which makes them harder to treat when they become e-waste at end-of-life. In this work, a novel design approach is proposed. The approach is using end-of-life recyclability as a design parameter in a multi-objective optimization algorithm. To enable disassembly and thereby recyclability, several eco-design implementations are developed. These different designs incorporate perforations, as a means to enable the dismantling. Double pulse tests are performed for all designed boards to ensure performance is not compromised. Three-point bending tests are used to estimate the flexural strength of the designs to evaluate the impact of the perforations on the mechanical strength. The optimization algorithm shows that high values of all the design objectives are achievable in multiple solutions. Differences in the switching energy are witnessed, but these can not directly be tied to the perforations, but appear to be more dependent on component variations. The perforations are estimated to increase the parasitic series inductance of the power loop by 5 pp to 22 pp. The lowest flexural strength is measured to be 21% compared to the conventional non-perforated benchmark design. Based on these results it is concluded that designs for end-of-life disassembly can be considered as possible solutions for the growing e-waste problem, as the impact on the converters' operation is negligible compared to the ease of disassembly it introduces.
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