Petroleum substitution, greenhouse gas emissions reduction and environmental benefits from the development of natural gas vehicles in China

Abstract

This study develops a bottom-up model to quantitatively assess the comprehensive effects of replacing traditional petroleum-powered vehicles with natural gas vehicles (NGVs) in China based on an investigation of the direct energy consumption and critical air pollutant (CAP) emission intensity, life-cycle energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of NGV fleets. The results indicate that, on average, there are no net energy savings from replacing a traditional fuel vehicle with an NGV. Interestingly, an NGV results in significant reductions in direct CAP and life-cycle GHG emissions compared to those of a traditional fuel vehicle, ranging from 61% to 76% and 12% to 29%, respectively. Due to the increasing use of natural gas as a vehicle fuel in China (i.e. approximately 28.2 billion cubic metres of natural gas in 2015), the total petroleum substituted with natural gas was approximately 23.8 million tonnes (Mt), which generated a GHG emission reduction of 16.9 Mt of CO 2 equivalent and a CAP emission reduction of 1.8 Mt in 2015. Given the significant contribution of NGVs, growing the NGV population in 2020 will further increase the petroleum substitution benefits and CAP and GHG emission reduction benefits by approximately 42.5 Mt of petroleum-based fuel, 3.1 Mt of CAPs and 28.0 Mt of GHGs. By 2030, these benefits will reach 81.5 Mt of traditional petroleum fuel, 5.6 Mt of CAPs and 50.5 Mt of GHGs, respectively.

Assessment of Greenhouse Gases and Pollutant Emissions in the Road Freight Transport Sector: A Case Study for São Paulo State, Brazil

“…Vermeulen et al [85] state that 85% of the total hydrocarbons emissions is CH 4 , which is not toxic to human health. Assuming that the emissions regard only the demand side, the increase of HC emissions due to the use of LNG and CNG fuel compared to the diesel baseline scenario corroborate the experimental results found in the studies performed by Grigoratos et al [86] and Yuan et al [87], which HC emissions increase with LNG and CNG use in internal combustion engines.…”

Adsorbed Natural Gas Storage for Onboard Applications

“…[ 37 ] The DOE has defined the minimum delivery pressure for an engine under the working condition as 0.48 MPa. [ 33,60 ] Considering the working range of inexpensive compressors, the ideal flexible MOF should adsorb a large quantity of methane between 3.5 and 6.5 MPa, and deliver most of the methane at about 0.5 MPa, giving rise to a high deliverable capacity. [ 39,46,65,125 ]…”

“…[ 3,30–32 ] Figure shows the global distribution of NGVs with China, Iran, Pakistan, Argentina, India, and Brazil having the majority of the world's NGV fleet. [ 3,31,33 ]…”

Review of life cycle greenhouse gases, air pollutant emissions and costs of road medium and heavy‐duty trucks

“…For CNG and LNG, although authors such as Yuan et al (2018) and Cai et al (2017) have considered lower emissions in the use phase (that is, the combustion of fuel in the truck), when analyzed in the entire life cycle, both LNG and CNG have higher average emissions (0.29 and 0.33 g/km, respectively) and have only 60 and 37% of chances of F I G U R E 5 Box plot of PM 2.5 emissions (g/km) for each technology (top) and accumulated probability of the absolute difference between diesel and each technology (bottom, negative values represent higher diesel values) actually reducing PM 2.5 emissions. Biodiesel emissions have a smaller chance of 25% of reducing emissions, and a higher average than diesel (0.47 g/km) due to the fertilizers and pesticides used for cultivating the feedstock (Cooper et al, 2019).…”