Digital Commons Network^™

How Responsive Is Saudi New Vehicle Fleet Fuel Economy To Fuel-And Vehicle-Price Policy Levers?, Tamara L. Sheldon, Rubal Dua

Faculty Publications

This paper investigates the drivers of recent improvements in Saudi Arabia's fleet fuel economy for new vehicles including passenger cars and light-duty trucks. Vehicle choice models are estimated using both aggregate new vehicle sales data and disaggregate new vehicle buyer survey data. The estimated models are used to simulate counterfactual policy scenarios. Simulation results suggest that the Saudi gasoline price elasticity of demand for new vehicle fuel economy decreased slightly over recent years, but it is still more elastic than that of the United States. Moreover, the increase in domestic gasoline prices between 2014 and 2016 accounted for 42% of …

Sustainability Impacts Of Building Energy Use Management, John Lattanze

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

No abstract provided.

On-Road Remote Sensing Of Automobile Emissions In The Fresno, Ca Area: Spring 2021, Gary A. Bishop

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

Winter Measurements Of Heavy-Duty Vehicles To Characterize The Cold Temperature Effectiveness Of Selective Catalytic Reductions Catalyst In Controlling Oxide Of Nitrogen Emissions, Gary A. Bishop, Molly J. Haugen, Brian C. Mcdonald

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

On-Road Remote Sensing Of Automobile Emissions In The Chicago Area: Fall 2020, Gary A. Bishop

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

Does California’S Emfac2017 Vehicle Emissions Model Under-Predict California Light-Duty Gasoline Vehicle Nox Emissions?, Gary A. Bishop

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

On-road remote sensing measurements of light and medium-duty gasoline vehicles collected within California’s South Coast Air Basin since 1999 generally fall within the range of observed summer ambient molar NO_x/CO measurements collected during morning rush hours. Compared with ambient and on-road emissions, the California Air Resources Board EMFAC model under predicts 2018 gasoline vehicle NO_x emission factors by more than a factor of 2.6. Contributing to these differences is that vehicles older than model year 2006 have NO_x emission deterioration rates that are up to 4 time’s higher on-road than predicted by the EMFAC model. A …

Pathways To Decarbonization Of Residential Heating, Alex Fridlyand, Paul Glanville, Michael Garrabrant

International High Performance Buildings Conference

Space and water heating are the largest consumers of energy in residential buildings, up to 85% in cold climates. In addition to conservation measures, improving the building thermal envelope and optimizing the heat and hot water distribution, improving the performance of the heating technology is critical to provide a pathway to significantly reduce carbon emissions, with a focus on existing buildings. Conventional fuel-fired heating systems that use existing infrastructure have approached their thermodynamic limit over the past 15-20 years. While the performance of electrically-driven heat pumps, that would use electricity produced at the margin in a fuel-switching scenario, have improved, …

Evaluating Financing Mechanisms And Economic Benefits To Fund Grade Separation Projects, Shailesh Chandra, Mehran Rahmani, Timothy Thai, Vivek Mishra, Jacqueline Camacho

Mineta Transportation Institute

Investment in transportation infrastructure projects generates benefits, both direct and indirect. While emissions reductions, crash reductions, and travel time savings are prominent direct benefits, there are indirect benefits in the form of real estate enhancements that could pay off debt or loan incurred in the improvement of the infrastructure itself. Studies have shown that improvements associated with rail transportation (such as station upgrades) trigger an increase in the surrounding real estate values, increasing both the opportunity for monetary gains and, ultimately, property tax collections. There is plenty of available guidance that provides blueprints for benefits calculations for operational improvements in …

Are Electric Cars The Future?, Nick Gable

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

My paper is about switching to electric cars for transportation. The end of fossil fuels is soon, and we must preserve them. We must cut down on fossil fuel use to save the environment from pollution. I use statistics on emissions and pollution from conventional cars and explain why we need to switch to electric cars sooner rather than later. I argue that there should be stipulations by the government regarding electric cars and conventional cars on the lot. I also say that we should start producing lots of electric cars as soon as possible.

Strong Temporal Variability In Methane Fluxes From Natural Gas Well Pad Soils, Seth N. Lyman, Huy N. Q. Tran, Marc L. Mansfield, Ric Bowers, Ann Smith

Bingham Research Center

We measured methane and carbon dioxide fluxes at natural gas well pad soils and undisturbed soils in the Rocky Mountain and Gulf Coast regions of the United States, including producing and gas storage wells. We collected both short-term (15 min) and multi-day (between 3 and 8), continuous measurements at 47 well pads and two undisturbed locations. Methane fluxes varied by more than an order of magnitude over periods as short as 30 min (e.g., 19–593 mg m⁻² h⁻¹ in one instance), and diurnal and seasonal variability was also significant (e.g., spring-to-fall change from 509 to 14174 mg m …

Refractory Black Carbon (Rbc) Variability In A 47-Year West Antarctic Snow And Firn Core, Marquetto Luciano, Susan Kaspari, Jefferson Cardia Simões

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Black carbon (BC) is an important climate-forcing agent that affects snow albedo. In this work, we present a record of refractory black carbon (rBC) variability, measured from a 20m deep snow and firn core drilled in West Antarctica (79°55’34.600” S, 94°21’13.3”W, 2122m above sea level) during the 2014–2015 austral summer. This is the highest elevation rBC record from West Antarctica. The core was analyzed using the Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2) coupled to a CETAC Marin-5 nebulizer. Results show a well-defined seasonality with geometric mean concentrations of 0.015 μg L^-1 for the wet season (austral summer–fall) and 0.057 μg …

An Assessment Of Renewable Energy Technology Implementation In Storrs, Connecticut: Emissions Reduction And Feasibility Of A Microgrid System At Uconn, Sophie Macdonald

Honors Scholar Theses

The purpose of this project is to design a clean energy-sourced microgrid for UConn’s main campus that would reduce the university’s energy emissions while remaining within the geographic boundaries of viable UConn-owned land. Economic cost was not considered in this analysis; instead, emissions and space constraints were the optimized measures of value and feasibility. Sources of energy that were considered include photovoltaics (PV), wind turbines, hydrokinetic systems, and fuel cells. Energy storage capacity was included in the analysis as well. The overall system was optimized first by ignoring space constraints and for a minimum of 10% reduction from the current …

Comprehensive And Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventories For Nebraska And The Midwest As Baselines For Climate Change Mitigation, Eric R. Holley

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Climate change is the paramount challenge of today for a sustainable future. Mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is necessary to reduce the associated risks and impacts on society. Using the EPA’s SIT and literature review, comprehensive GHG-emissions inventories were developed for the state of Nebraska over 25 years (1990-2015) and agricultural GHG emissions inventories were developed for the Midwest U.S for one year (2016). Nebraska’s net emissions increased from 56.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMtCO₂e) in 1990 to 87.4 MMtCO₂e in 2016. Agriculture was found to be the sector with the most …

Economic And Environmental Implications Of Biomass Commercialization In Agricultural Processing, Bin Li, Onur Boyabatli, Buket Avci

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Motivated by the agricultural industries, this paper studies the economic and environmental implications of biomass commercialization; that is, converting organic waste into a saleable product, from the perspective of a processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and biomass. We characterize the economic value of biomass commercializa- tion and examine how input and output spot price uncertainties affect this value. Using a model calibration, we find that lower input spot price variability or higher output spot price variabil- ity or correlation between the two spot prices increases this value for a typical palm oil mill. …

Reducing Nox Emissions Of Cargo Handling Equipment (Che) With Humid Air Systems, Hamid Rahai, Jeremy Bonifacio

Mineta Transportation Institute

The authors designed and tested a humid air system (HAS) for reducing NOx emissions of an LPG-powered forklift. The HAS uses distilled water and heat from the exhaust to generate steam that is injected into the intake air of the engine to increase humidity and thus achieve NOx reduction. Field tests with HAS have shown 2.2 ppm of NOx reduction with each percent increase in humidity of the intake air. A provisional patent based on the developed system has been filed.

Perspectives Of Global Warming, Diomaris Padilla Dr.

Open Educational Resources

This course is designed to foster an interest in global environmental issues by informing the student of both the anthropogenic and natural causes for climate change. While focusing on the scientific aspects of climate change, a broader study will include issues pertaining to global policy and economics in order to engage the student in public policy debates.

On-Road Remote Sensing Of Automobile Emissions In The Denver Area: Winter 2020, Gary A. Bishop

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

On-Road Remote Sensing Of Automobile Emissions In The Tulsa Area: Fall 2019, Gary A. Bishop

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

Are Electric Vehicles A Panacea For Reducing Ozone Precursor Emissions?, Gary A. Bishop

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

Vehicle Exhaust Remote Sensing Device Method To Screen Vehicles For Evaporative Running Loss Emissions, Gary A. Bishop, Timothy H. Defries, James A. Sidebottom, James M. Kemper

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

Vehicle hydrocarbon (HC) emissions can be emitted from either tailpipe or non-tailpipe locations and understanding their fleet apportionment is important for successful air pollution policy. Vehicles initially misidentified as having elevated tailpipe HC emissions first indicated that roadside exhaust sensors could detect the presence of evaporative HC emissions as increased noise in the HC/carbon dioxide (CO₂) correlation measurement. The 90^th percentile of the largest residual of the HC/CO₂ correlation is defined as a running loss index (RLI) for each measurement. An RLI that is three standard deviations or greater above the instruments noise indicates possible evaporative …

Inspection And Maintenance Evaluation Using Historical U.S. Remote Sensing Measurements, Gary A. Bishop

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

Simulation Of Engine Faults And Their Impact On Emissions And Vehicle Performance For A Liquefied Petroleum Gas Taxi, Bruce Organ, Yuhan Huang, John L. Zhou, Yat Shing Yam, Wai Chun Mok, Edward F.C. Chan

Faculty of Science & Technology (THEi)

© 2020 Elsevier B.V. The deterioration of emissions control systems in a spark ignition engine is predominantly a gradual process of wear and tear occurring as vehicles accumulate mileage. As new innovations in engine and emissions technology have been progressively introduced to meet lower emissions targets, the impact of gradual deterioration of hardware has become more challenging to identify and quantify in the repair industry. When a pioneering emissions control programme utilising remote sensing to detect high emitting gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vehicles was to be introduced in Hong Kong, it became apparent the repair industry needed specialised …

Influence Of Diethyl Ether On The Performance And Emissions Of A Compression Ignition Engine Fuelled With Biodiesel, N. Kapilan, S. Sadashiva Prabhu, M. Vasudeva

Open Access archive

India is one of the major importers of petroleum products and hence government of India has taken several steps to find suitable alternative fuels to the fossil fuels. The biodiesel derived from non-edible oils is considered as an immediate substitute for the fossil diesel. In this work, biodiesel was produced from non-edible honge oil and used as substitute for the diesel. The engine tests were carried out on a diesel engine which is most widely used for agricultural purpose. From the engine tests, we observed that the diesel engine performance with biodiesel is lower than the diesel due to lower …

Automated Measurement Of Heavy Equipment Greenhouse Gas Emission: The Case Of Road/Bridge Construction And Maintenance, Reza Akhavian

Mineta Transportation Institute

Road/bridge construction and maintenance projects are major contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2), mainly due to extensive use of heavy-duty diesel construction equipment and large-scale earthworks and earthmoving operations. Heavy equipment is a costly resource and its underutilization could result in significant budget overruns. A practical way to cut emissions is to reduce the time equipment spends doing non-value-added activities and/or idling. Recent research into the monitoring of automated equipment using sensors and Internet-of-Things (IoT) frameworks have leveraged machine learning algorithms to predict the behavior of tracked entities.

In this project, end-to-end deep learning models …

Aerial And Ground-Based Optical Gas Imaging Survey Of Uinta Basin Oil And Gas Wells, Seth N. Lyman, Trang Tran, Marc L. Mansfield, Arvind P. Ravikumar

Bingham Research Center

We deployed a helicopter with an infrared optical gas imaging camera to detect hydrocarbon emissions from 3,428 oil and gas facilities (including 3,225 producing oil and gas well pads) in Utah’s Uinta Basin during winter and spring 2018. We also surveyed 419 of the same well pads from the ground. Winter conditions led to poor contrast between emission plumes and the ground, leading to a detection limit for the aerial survey that was between two and six times worse than a previous summertime survey. Because the ground survey was able to use the camera’s high-sensitivity mode, the rate of detected …

On-The-Road Testing Of The Effects Of Driver’S Experience, Gender, Speed, And Road Grade On Car Emissions, Abdelhaleem I. Khader, Randy S. Martin

Publications

On-road vehicles have become a dominant source of air pollution and energy consumption in many parts of the world. As a result, estimating the amount of pollution from these vehicles and analyzing the factors affecting their emission is necessary to understand and manage ambient air quality. Traditionally, automobile emissions have been measured with dynamometer tests using representative driving cycles. A review of the related literature shows that there is a lack of real life, on-the-road testing of automobile emissions. Moreover, a few previous studies have directly discussed the impact of driver variability on emissions from the vehicles. This research analyzes …

Quantifying Methane Emissions In The Uintah Basin During Wintertime Stagnation Episodes, C. S. Foster, Erik T. Crosman, J. D. Horel, Seth Lyman, B. Fasoli, R. Bares, J. C. Lin

Bingham Research Center

This study presents a meteorologically-based methodology for quantifying basin-scale methane (CH₄) emissions in Utah’s Uintah Basin, which is home to over 9,000 active and producing oil and natural gas wells. Previous studies in oil and gas producing regions have often relied on intensive aircraft campaigns to estimate methane emissions. However, the high cost of airborne campaigns prevents their frequent undertaking, thus providing only daytime snapshots of emissions rather than more temporally-representative estimates over multiple days. Providing estimates of CH₄ emissions from oil and natural gas production regions across the United States is important to inform leakage rates …

Analysis Of 2017 Multi-Agency Field Campaign Data For Wintertime Surface Pollution In The Cache Valley Of Utah, Gerardo Diaz Jr.

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Atmospheric motions resulting from rising airborne parcels help to scatter emissions, including PM, away from their sources, decreasing local pollution levels. However this pattern shifts during the wintertime, as cold air damming and inversion layers create stable conditions that limit the vertical transport of air masses. Both point and area sources of emissions currently dot the western United States and are responsible for the production of the vast majority of agricultural pollution in the region. At the same time, population-growth has resulted in an ever-increasing amount of urbansource emissions. The entrapment of PM, which are produced when a wide array …

Towards Quantifiable Metrics Warranting Industry-Wide Corporate Death Penalties, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

In the singular search for profits, some corporations inadvertently kill humans. If this routinely occurs throughout an industry, it may no longer serve a net positive social purpose for society and should be eliminated. This article provides a path to an objective quantifiable metric for determining when an entire industry warrants the corporate death penalty. First, a theoretical foundation is developed with minimum assumptions necessary to provide evidence for corporate public purposes. This is formed into an objective quantifiable metric with publicly-available data and applied to two case studies in the U.S.: the tobacco and coal mining industries. The results …

How International Oil Companies Could Assist Greece To Achieve The Sustainable Development Goals: A Conversation Starter, Alexandra Sdoukou, Andreas Tornaritis, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

This policy paper wishes to be a timely contribution towards a fruitful debate among stakeholders; it urges International Oil Companies (IOCs) to examine how the critical Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Greece can be integrated into their core business so that the oil and gas industry can contribute to the country’s sustainable growth.