Design for the Environment/Automobile Engines I

The Fleet Services in the City of Toronto provides responsive and comprehensive support to public programs and services in the Greater Toronto Area. They are mainly using mid-size car with gasoline internal combustion engine. The pollutants created from the combustion of gasoline such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon monoxide are becoming a major source of concern. The city of Toronto has committed to lower the emissions of greenhouse gases by 6% below the 1990 level by 2012, the Fleet Service is taking an initiation to help achieving the city’s environmental objective.

The Fleet has approximately 4,300 vehicles in service around the Greater Toronto Area The vehicles are heavily operated around the city and have frequent stop and go. This makes the gasoline internal combustion engine very energy inefficient. The current baseline is midsize vehicle powered by convention gasoline internal combustion engine (ICEV). The alternatives for comparison are mid-sized cars powered by plug in hybrid (PHEV), and hydrogen fuel cell with metal hydride hydrogen storage (FCV). The ideal vehicle for the Fleet should have prices ranged from low-end to moderate, and be classified as mid-sized vehicles for the transportation of equipments while maintaining low energy consumption. The Chevrolet Malibu was chosen to represent this class of vehicles, specifically the 2008 Chevrolet Malibu, 2008 Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid and a hypothetical hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with metal hydride hydrogen storage derived from the current Chevrolet Malibu models. The hybrid vehicle is assumed to be similar to the Honda FCX Clarity.

Highlights and Recommendations
The ICEV was initially assumed to be the most harmful to the environment, and the FCV was assumed to be the least harmful to the environment. Hybrid and fuel cell vehicles consume less energy and emit fewer or in the case of fuel cell vehicles almost no pollutants; however, this statement does not account for the energy consumed and pollutants emitted during the production and disposal of the vehicles. The technical, environmental(Streamlined LCA and EIOLCA), and economic performance of the vehicle is ranked in the table below with a score of 3 being the best and 1 being the worst.



Based on the scores the ICEV is the best while the FCV was the worst. The SLCA showed that the hybrid vehicle is the best while the EIOLCA shows that the ICEV was the best. In terms of technical performance, the hydrogen fuel cell is the least durable due to the presence of hydrogen embrittlement.

Based on the results of the analysis, ICEV is still the best solution from the environmental and economic aspects in the near future. However, taking into consideration of the shortage of fossil fuel and fluctuation of gasoline prices in the future, the PHEV and FCV can lower the demand of fossil fuels and would be considered as a long term solution. The recommendation is that it is not necessary for the City of Toronto to replace all vehicles with PHEVs at once, but can slowly replace with PHEVs when their ICEVs have reached their end-of-life. The use FCVs may be considered for the more distant future as infrastructure becomes more available and the technology becomes more mature.

Functional Analysis
The functional performance is evaluated by four aspects: durability, reliability, mechanical performance and fuel availability. Each category is rated in a scale of 0-10.



Based the comparison, the ICEV, and PHEV have similar overall functional performance, while the FCV received a significant lower overall rating. The major functional concern of using FCV is the fuel availability. Infrastructure for filling hydrogen into FCV is rarely available in North America. However when the technology becomes more popular and widely used in public, the availability of fuel will increase as well. In the other hand, PHEV has been increasingly attractive to many car manufacturer, for example GM, Fisker, Toyota, etc. In terms of mechanical performance, the PHEV, and FCV can provide a higher low-end torque for acceleration which makes it more suitable for frequency stop and go service vehicle. Also the relative low rating for FCV in the durability and reliable is due to the fact that hydrogen storage system has a generally low service life of 1500 cycles and hydrogen embrittlement can potentially pose an engineering problem to the vehicle. These are both dependent on the engineering design and quality of the vehicle and may improve as the technology develops. Since hybrid vehicle uses both gasoline and electricity to provide power, the additional feature regenerative braking, helps regain electricity especially when the car in the city, as above mentioned, needs to stop and go frequently. One advantage of PHEV compared with a conventional hybrid vehicle is that, as implied by the name, the vehicle may be pluged into the electric grid and charged. However, the capacity and the service life of the hybrid vehicle batteries still limited, but is expected to improve as the technology develops.

Streamlined Lifecycle Analysis (SLCA)
All three alternatives are assumed to be manufactured at the GM facility of Orion Assembly at Michigan. Since the vehicle’s intended use is in Toronto, it is also assumed disposal occurs there. Based on the above assumptions, we will only present the points where there is a significant difference between each alternative's scores.

For SLCA, it is necessary to take in account that different stage of a vehicle has different environmental impact. As such, weight has been incorporated into the stages accordingly. The delivery stage will have the least impact, and is given a weight of 0.5. The use stage will have the most impact due to the time span and the intensity of the stages, and consequently is given a weight of 2. The impact of other stages are relatively similar and thus retain the weight of 1.

For the delivery stage, the environment impact is assumed to be equivalent for all three alternatives. The plastic and bubble wrap for packaging used in Orion Assembly plant are returnable and used, therefore minimized the material used and solid residue in packaging. The vehicle is assumed to be delivered by train and truck and therefore required appreciate amount of energy in the process. The liquid residue comes from the detergents and wax that are use for cleaning.

Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle
Resource Extraction

GM North America recycles 83% of all the waste materials in 2005. However, components like chassis demands high usage of raw materials including rare metals. Extraction of raw material requires the most intensive amount of energy for mining equipments and transportation based on data obtained from EIOLCA. Raw material extraction is known to produce moderate amount of residues. Companies use open-cast miningresulting in significant soil displacement. Natural gas requires significant amount of water for extraction. The production of iron and steel releases substantial amount of gas residues: industrial emissions of CO at 28% and Total Particulate Matter, Volatile Organic Compounds, NOx and SOx at 3%. Manufacturing

The vehicle is assumed to be manufactured at the Orion Assembly plant where efforts and techniques to reduce the use of hazardous materials are implemented. The plant recycles solid and liquid wastes, such as Plastics Caps and Plugs as well as batteries. Aside from coal, the assembly receives the energy from landfill gas (LPG) as an alternative which cuts coal usage down to 25% annually. Due to increased production, solid residue has been decreased due to recycling effort but liquid and gas residue has been increased significantly due to the painting process. Use

The Malibu LS uses exclusively gasoline for internal combustion. Produced from petroleum, gasoline is not renewable. The energy efficiency is poor due to nature of IC engine and frequent ‘stop and go’ during city driving. Automobiles do not produce significant amount of solid or liquid waste, providied they are maintained properly. In contrast, air emission is the greatest environmental concern in operation of gasoline-based vehicles. Although use of technologies such as catalytic converter and Malibu’s ECOTEC engine allow pollution reduction to 97% compared to 1970s, it is somewhat counter-balanced by miles driven presently. End of life

Being composed of primarily steel and due to GM’s recycling effort, the Malibu LS contains minor hazardous materials. The primary material steel is recycled using electric arc furnace with less energy effort than raw material processing. However, the vehicle must be disassembled into its constituents for salvage or scrap. The vehicle’s fluid are easily accessible with possible recovery, but major operation is needed to render them harmless or useful. At disposal, nearly 50% of gaseous residues are emitted into the ozone layer from the initial refrigerant. Gaseous residues are difficult to recover and capture, and is produced significantly during waste incineration.

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle
Resource Extraction

PHEV required large capacity batteries, which leads to increases in the vehicle weight. Therefore, a large amount of copper and aluminium is used in order to reduce the weight of PHEV. NiMH batteries are less detrimental to overall environmental health compare with other type of batteries. However, in a certain extent the mining of copper, aluminium, and nickel is unavoidable. Extraction of nickel required medium energy use, with SO2 and CO2 are used and released in aqueous ammoniacal leach solution, one of the steps to extract nickel.

Manufacturing The vehicle is assumed to be manufactured at the Orion Assembly plant where efforts and techniques to reduce the use of hazardous materials are implemented. Especially for Hybrid Malibu assembly, the plant recycles solid and liquid wastes, also encourage labour in the plant to recycle and reuse materials that is necessary for the assembly of Hybrid Malibu.

Use PHEV uses both electric motor and gasoline IC engine to generate power. Therefore, it reduces fuel consumption. Malibu Hybrid has a 2 MPG reduction in both city and highway fuel economy. This can lead to a reduction in gaseous residues. However, recharging of the batteries require electricity of power generation plant. As such, gaseous residues and energy use is greatly increased due to the power generation. Although energy used to charge batteries in PHEV is very high, the regenerative braking system helps the PHEV to regain some energy while traveling.

End of Life At the end of the useful lives of PHEV, more than 75% of the vehicle can be recycled and reused. Batteries and other components can be returned to the Orion Assembly plant to be reused or recycled. As such, the solid and gaseous residues and materials are being significantly minimized. However, coolant and cleaner are not recycled and treated as liquid residues.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle
Resource Extraction Fuel cells require platinum group metals (PGM) as catalysts which are considered rare materials. The extraction of these metals is expected to produce significant negative impacts on the environment due to fact that the concentration of PGM is approximately 100 to 1000 grams per ton of material mined. The energy required to extract the metals is expected to be significant due to the amount of material that needs to be processed given that the concentration of PGM is relatively low. The extraction process requires the use of hydrochloric acid and chlorine which are toxic and harmful to the environment. Due to the fact that the concentration of PGM is relatively low, significant amounts of tailings will be generated in the extraction process. A significant amount of copper is required to manufacture the motor.

Manufacturing The vehicle is assumed to be manufactured at the Orion plant where efforts and techniques to reduce the use of hazardous materials are implemented. The facility receives the energy from both coal and landfill gas. The facility recycles solid and liquid wastes and volatile solvents. The vehicle requires PGM ; however, the use of PGM is likely minimized due to the cost of PGM.

Use The vehicle is fueled with hydrogen which can be produced from renewable resources and wastes streams and will reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources. The fuel cell is approximately 50% efficient as opposed to 20-30% efficiency for internal combustion engines. The motor is expected to not run while the vehicle is stopped. The vehicle uses regenerative braking which recovers energy and reduces the usage of conventional brakes which reduces the amount of brake dust generated. The electric motor does not require engine oil or coolant which reduces the amount of fluids that need to be disposed of during maintenance. The fuel cell is expected to emit only water vapour which is not considered a pollutant.

End of Life The proton exchange membrane of the fuel cell is difficult to recycle. The membranes are expected to be incinerated at end of their service life. Incineration generates toxic gases and fly ash. The toxic gases are removed using scrubbers which generate waste water which must subsequently be treated. The fly ash is toxic and must be disposed of in specially designed land fill to prevent ground water contamination. The incineration process recovers energy from incinerated waste.

Economic Input-Output Lifecycle Analysis (EIOLCA)


Note: The EIOLCA will be based on the manufacturing and use phase as they have the most significant environmental impact in road vehicles. Pre-manufacturing is implicitly considered in the manufacturing phase, the delivery phase is considered trivial as all vehicles are transported in the same method and the disposal phase is not considered due to the difficulty to obtain reliable information relative to the time span. Although the report is ideally targeted towards the City of Toronto, but as a Canadian EIOLCA model is not available, the result should approximate the North America population. All present values are calculated using an average inflation rate of 3%, fuel cost is assumed to have a 10% increases in price annually due to global energy supply/demand and a 5% increases in indirect electricity cost is applied to compensate the increasing energy demand. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the average life spans of a vehicle over 13 years and have a final mileage of 230,000km. Due to the heavy usage of a service vehicle, life span is assumed to be reduced to 10 years and the mileage increase to around 300,000km.

Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle
Manufacturing The Malibu LS 1997 producer price is $13,580.37 and used in eiolca.net under the general automobile manufacturing sector. The power generation and supply sector is a primary contributor of conventional air pollutant by generating the majority of SO2 at 70% of the total and a significant amount of NOx at 30%. It is also a primary contributor of greenhouse gas by generating about 30% of the total GWP and nearly 35% of the total CO2. The iron and steel mills and aluminium production sector both generates a fair amount of CO. The iron and steel mills and truck transportation sector also produced a fair amount of CO2 and GWP at 10 – 15 % of the total.

The majority of energy comes from natural gas and coal at 41.7% and 25.2% respectively. The power generation and supply sector consumes majority of coal at 92.3 % and 11.6% of natural gas. The iron and steel mills consumes significant natural gas amount at 23.3%. Furthermore, the motor vehicle parts manufacturing consumes 16.7 % of electricity and 9.3 % of natural gas. The iron and steel mills sector contribute significantly to toxic release: About 57% of total water releases and 46.6 % of total offsite transfers. The automobile and light truck manufacturing sector contributes significantly to air at about 17.7 % of total point air and 16.2 % of total air releases.

Use Besides the manufacturing phrase, the use phrase of an automobile and fuel production also has a tremendous environmental impact. Malibu LS is assumed to produce 2.4kgCO2/L.The environmental impact of the use phrase is summarized below:

The amounts of energy used, toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases produced are summarized in the table below:

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle
Manufacturing The manufacturing of PHEV in our analysis is separated into 4 sectors in www.eiolca.net; general automobile manufacturing, manufacturing of batteries, electric motor and other electrical components manufacturing. Table below shows 1997 producer price fro each economic activity.

Power generation and supply along with iron and steel mills results in the most production of conventional air pollutants as well as the greenhouse gas emission. Over half of the SO2 emission is generated by power generation and supply, and it also generates one quarter of the overall Global Warming Potential (GWP) which is a significant amount of greenhouse gas contribute to global warming. In terms of the toxic release, the major source of total releases is in the topic of Copper, nickel, lead, and zinc mining. Moreover, land releases contributes almost 99% of the total releases in the topic of Copper, nickel, lead, and zinc mining. This is common in nonferrous metal mining industry because most of the nonferrous metal waste can’t be reuse and has to be landfilled.

Use The use stage of the vehicle has an enormous effect on the environment and has to be included in our analysis. Assume a mid-size vehicle has a use life mileage of 300,000km and produces 2.4kgCO2/Litre of gas. Table below shows the use stage environmental effect.

Plug-in charging of the batteries is also an area where our analysis is covered. The average ON retail price of electricity is 5.4 cents/kWh. A nickel metal hydride battery has a capacity of 13.2kWh. Assume a 9000 cycles life for a NiMH battery, $4863.81 of 1997$ is input to the power supply sector in eiolca.net.

The global warming potential and energy used in power generation are almost double in the oil refineries activity, which create has a significant effect on the cost in which lead to further dicussions in the Cost Analysis section. In conclusion, the total environmental effect are list in the table below.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle
Production The production of the FCV is modeled as a standard automobile with the addition of a fuel cell, storage batteries, and an electric motor and associated controllers. The fuel does have a corresponding sector in the EIOLCA. The fuel cell is modeled as a primary battery because a primary battery, by definition, directly converts chemical energy to electrical energy. The producer costs of components of the vehicle are divided into the sectors in the following table along with their corresponding economic input in 1997 US dollars.

The economic inputs to the Automobile and light truck manufacturing sector is obtained from the base MSRP from Car and Driver and General Motors’ 2006 profit margin. The inputs to the next three sectors are determined using the estimated cost per kilowatt and estimated power of the components. Use The direct use of the FCV should not produce greenhouse gases because hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas and the chemical between hydrogen and oxygen does not produce greenhouse gases; however, the emission greenhouse gases is expected to occur during hydrogen production. Based on the assumed service life of 300,000 km and a fuel economy of 68 miles per kg of hydrogen or approximately 109.435 km/kg, the vehicle is expected to consume 2,741.35 kg of hydrogen. From the energy content of 142 MJ/kg the vehicle is expected to consume 389.2717 GJ of energy. The hydrogen is assumed to be produced at the fuel station using electrolysis of water. The energy efficiency of electrolysis water is 70%. The compression and transfer of hydrogen are expected to be 90% and 97% efficient respectively. The well-to-tank efficiency is 61.11%. Based on the well-to-tank efficiency, energy consumption of the vehicle and the assumption that electricity is the only source of energy used to make and compress the hydrogen, 637.0016 GJ or 176,944.889kW-h of electricity is needed for the process. The energy loss associated with the transfer of hydrogen is assumed to be associated only with the escaping of hydrogen gas. The electrolysis is assumed to have 100 % water usage efficiency. Using the previous two assumptions, 25.2562070 m3 of water would be needed to produce the hydrogen. Based on the estimated electricity consumption 1997 equivalent producer price is $8,859.46. The 1997 producer price of water is is $3.06. The economic inputs are summarized in the table below

Results The EIOLCA model predicts the following environmental impacts. The amounts of energy consumed, toxic chemicals generated, and greenhouse gases emitted are listed in the table below.



Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle
The details of Malibu LS is listed for comparsion with the alternatives. Furthermore, The other alternatives use the same non-vehicle specific assumptions made here. The direct cost of Malibu LS emerges from fixed, fuel, maintenance, insurance and service cost. The average fuel economy is assumed to be 25 MPG with fuel cost of $1.03/L as of March 2008 in US. The indirect cost considered are environmental and health costs. The manufacturing of car and its components has a huge impact on environment due to its air pollution and thus the producer is responsible for the cost of such an effect. The external and health costs related to air emission’s effect on the environment is calculated based on “Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Goods and Services”. Moreover, a study conducted by Victoria Transport Policy Institute on 2002 has estimated the air pollution cost by vehicle emission to be $0.045 per miles travelled.

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle verse Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle
Although PHEV has a better fuel economy relative to Malibu LS with a 2 MPG decreases, it also a $6,000 increase in the capital cost and electricity cost for charging the batteries. The maintainence cost of PHEV is also reduced by 50% compared with the convnetional IC engine vehicle due to its regenerative braking system. Therefore, the direct cost of PHEV is more than $10,000 difference compared with Malibu LS. Electricity generated by power plant has an enormous effect on the environment. The power plant generates much more air pollutants and greenhouse gas which increases the health and environmental cost.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle verse Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle has an amazingly high capital cost due to the fuel cell technology is still underdevelopment and high production cost. However, since the fuel cell vehicle uses hydrogen to generate power, therefore the price for hydrogen is much cheaper than gasoline for conventional IC engine vehicle. For indirect cost comparison, hydrogen fuel cell is considered to be an zero emission vehicle which only emit water into the air. Therefore reduces a large number of air pollutants and greenhouse gas, which in turn reduces enormous amount of environmental and health cost.

Societal Analysis
The safety issue is a major aspect in the societal assessment. All three alternatives poses potential hazard when accident occurs. Gasoline and hydrogen are both dangerous fuels and the high voltage battery in PHEV is hazardous as well. It is difficult to draw a conclusion on which alternative have a better safety performance. Another aspect to concern about is the general acceptance of the public. The conventional gasoline internal combustion engine has been utilized for decades so it should not create any major public acceptance problems. However, the hydrogen fuel cell is a rather new technology and the acceptance of the public is still unknown, especially when hydrogen is generally known as an explosive gas to the public. The popularity of PHEV is increasing rapidly and has reputation as being a green vehicle. This can provide a green image to the Fleet Service as it is taking an initiation to improve air quality and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in the City of Toronto.