Life cycle environmental impact assessment and review of hydrogen fuels obtained from various sources for vehicles

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of passenger car (CAR) heavy duty vehicle (HDV), and sport utility vehicle (SUV) which are hydrogen fueled Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs), and various production methods of hydrogen fuel used in these vehicles are considered for analyses and comparative evaluations. In addition, this study includes recommendations for selecting the production method and vehicle type with economic data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Eight renewable and non-renewable hydrogen production options are identified, using proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis driven by the electricity obtained from solar, biomass, nuclear, chlorine plants, coal, natural gas, coke oven gas and pet coke. This study is designed to utilize the LCA method for examining the use of hydrogen fuel produced from these plants in 3 different vehicle types. The Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET), which is a potential LCA software, is employed to analyze the carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), particulate matter pollutants (PM10), nitrous oxide (N2O) and particulate organic carbon (POC) emissions. According to the results of the analysis, the lowest emission value is obtained for the passenger car using hydrogen fuel produced by PEM electrolysis method as given in Pathway 1. The results further indicate that the highest emission value is 42.86 g/km CO2, and the lowest is 0.00065 g/km POC for the passenger car as presented in Pathway 1, where the best data are obtained. In contrast, the highest emission value of the HDV vehicle type using hydrogen fuel produced in Pathway 8 is 1921.53 g/km CO2, and the lowest emission value is 0.0076 g/km POC.