scholarly journals Decarbonisation of Urban Freight Transport Using Electric Vehicles and Opportunity Charging

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 3258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tharsis Teoh ◽  
Oliver Kunze ◽  
Chee-Chong Teo ◽  
Yiik Wong

The high costs of using electric vehicles (EVs) is hindering wide-spread adoption of an EV-centric decarbonisation strategy for urban freight transport. Four opportunity charging (OC) strategies—during breaks and shift changes, during loading activity, during unloading activity, or while driving on highways—are evaluated towards reducing EV costs. The study investigates the effect of OC on the lifecycle costs and carbon dioxide emissions of four cases of different urban freight transport operations. Using a parametric vehicle model, the weight and battery capacity of operationally suitable fleets were calculated for ten scenarios (i.e., one diesel vehicle scenario, two EV scenarios without OC, and seven EV scenarios with four OC strategies and two charging technology types). A linearized energy consumption model sensitive to vehicle load was used to calculate the fuel and energy used by fleets for the transport operations. OC was found to significantly reduce lifecycle costs, and without any strong negative influence on carbon dioxide emissions. Other strong influences on lifecycle costs are the use of inductive technology, extension of service lifetime, and reduction of battery price. Other strong influences on carbon dioxide emissions are the use of inductive technology and the emissions factors of electricity production.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6703
Author(s):  
Hamid R. Sayarshad ◽  
Vahid Mahmoodian ◽  
Nebojša Bojović

Urban freight transport is essential for supporting our society regarding providing the daily needs of consumers and local businesses. In addition, it allows for the movement of goods, is distributed within urban environments, provides thousands of jobs, and supports economic growth. However, a number of issues are associated with urban freight transport, including environmental impacts, road congestion, and land use of freight facilities that conflicts with residential land use. Electric freight vehicles create zero emissions and provide a sustainable delivery system in comparison with conventional freight vehicles. In this study, a novel dynamic inventory routing and pricing problem under a mixed fleet of electric and conventional vehicles was formulated to minimize the total travel and charging costs. The proposed model is capable of deciding on replenishment times and amounts and vehicle routes. We aimed to determine the maximum social welfare (SW) capable of providing an optimal trade-off between the supplier cost and customer delay that uses a mixed fleet of vehicles. Our computational study was conducted on real data generated from a delivery dataset in Tehran. Under the proposed policy with a fleet of only electric vehicles, the SW increased by 3% while the average customer delay reduced by 15% compared with a fleet of conventional vehicles. The results show that the number of served customers and customer delay would be affected by transitioning conventional urban freight vehicles to electric vehicles. Therefore, the proposed delivery system has a significant impact on energy savings and emissions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1616
Author(s):  
Antonina Rita Limongi ◽  
Emanuele Viviano ◽  
Maria De Luca ◽  
Rosa Paola Radice ◽  
Giuliana Bianco ◽  
...  

The need to safeguard our planet by reducing carbon dioxide emissions has led to a significant development of research in the field of alternative energy sources. Hydrogen has proved to be the most promising molecule, as a fuel, due to its low environmental impact. Even if various methods already exist for producing hydrogen, most of them are not sustainable. Thus, research focuses on the biological sector, studying microalgae, and other microorganisms’ ability to produce this precious molecule in a natural way. In this review, we provide a description of the biochemical and molecular processes for the production of biohydrogen and give a general overview of one of the most interesting technologies in which hydrogen finds application for electricity production: fuel cells.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 1233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leise Oliveira ◽  
Betty Barraza ◽  
Bruno Bertocini ◽  
Cassiano Isler ◽  
Dannúbia Pires ◽  
...  

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