Life Cycle Assessment of a Pico Hydro Generator Made of E-Waste Components Based on Frugal Innovation

Access to reliable and affordable electricity remains a persistent challenge in many developing countries, especially for rural inhabitants. Consequently, there is a crucial need to develop cheap alternative methods to generate reliable electricity. An insight into the increasing amount of e-waste and the potential for second-life applications of some components from waste material has given rise to innovative ideas for incorporating these components into renewable energy generation systems. This paper explores the concept of a frugal innovation technique based on reusing, repurposing and second - life application of waste materials, such as the Power Supply Unit (PSU) from a desktop computer, to develop a hybrid solar-pico hydro generation system. A life cycle assessment of the reuse hybrid solar-pico hydro generator is performed, and a comparison is made between the impacts of the reuse system and a new one based on recent technology. The results revealed that the impact contribution of the reuse system is significantly lower, with the highest impact category being respiratory inorganics, having a normalized impact value of 0.11. Other impact categories, such as global warming potential and non-renewable energy, have normalized impact values of approximately 0.06. Notably, the comparison between the impacts of the reuse solution and a new system indicates that the new solution has about 70% higher impact than the reuse solution.