Transportation EGEE 101H

Dr. Semih Eser

Semester Paper Adil Sabir, Danny Acheck, Alex Radaoui

5/1/15

Abstract:

The concept of transportation has long been incorporated throughout human history. Beginning as early as the first evolved Homo sapiens, transportation’s contribution to

civilization is one of crucial importance. While the first forms of transportation were walking or

using animal drawn ­ carriages, the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the internal and external

combustion engines as well as the steam engine, a type of external combustion engine. As

transportation developed, engines that powered trains, automobiles, and boats increased in

efficiency. Railroad transportation evolved to being powered by electricity, while automobiles

shifted toward petroleum­based fuel powered engines. Transportation was vital to urbanization,

then later, suburbanization. A huge and negative side­effect of industrialization is the pollution

induced climate change it has caused. The combustion of fossil fuels in gasoline and diesel

result in harmful chemicals being released into the air and water. In recent years, there has been

a huge push to reduce fossil fuel combustion and switch to more environmentally friendly

methods like hybrid electric powered cars. This essay identifies the different types of

transportation and their economic costs, as well as analyzes environmental impacts of the

industry and discusses how to become more environmentally responsible.

Introduction:

The Human Race is currently at a point in time where people and goods need to be

moving from place to place at a constant and efficient rate. What is it that keeps everything in

constant motion, from starting point to destination? Transportation. Transportation is an

industry that our society has become reliant on in the modern era. Moving millions of people

and goods everyday, our society today could not be a functioning one without modern

transportation.

Transportation exists in many forms including air, water, road, and rail. One of the most

prevalent forms of transportation today is the automobile. Despite its convenience, the

automobile contributes to pollution of the environment at an alarming rate. At the global scale,

26% of primary energy is consumed for transport purposes, and 23% of greenhouse gas

emissions are energy related (Helmers and Marx, 2012). When touching upon the subject of

transportation, one cannot ignore the enormous detrimental effects that this industry has caused.

As well as breaking down the science behind the combustion of fossil fuels and the effect of

them from a biological and chemical standpoint, this essay will also touch upon some of the

recent and more eco­friendly innovations in transportation such as hybrid electric cars.

The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate extensive research on the topic of

transportation and to provide an overview of the industry from a historical and economic

standpoint. While transportation is an extensive topic made up of many components, the

following pages will focus on the positive and negative impacts associated with the industry as

well as the future outlook. Additionally, an analysis of the environmental impact of the industry,

and a discussion of modern innovations in transportation and their practicality in today’s world

will be included as well.

Literature Review:

From the invention of the wheel, to the 280 mile per hour electrically powered bullet

trains, transportation has been vital to the structure of modern civilization. By definition,

transportation is the movement of people, animals, or goods from one place to

another. When conducting research about the historical development of the transportation

industry, Vaclav Smil’s book, Energy, was especially helpful in obtaining these facts. During the

Industrial Revolution, society saw the first combustion engine, developed by Thomas

Newcomen. This was the spark for modern day transportation as it provided the means for these

powerful machines to operate; it’s creation paved the way for the first steamboat, the first steam

powered train, and eventually the automobile but also triggered the beginning of mass coal

mining and consumption (Smil, 108).

When conducting research, many of the statistics on transportation in the 21st century

came directly from the National Bureau of Transportation. This source was useful for finding out

data and statistics categorized by mode of transportation or by region. For example, in 2011,

there were 172 billion gallons of fuel consumed by highway vehicles, yet only 246 million

registered vehicles in the United States (US Department of Transportation, 2011). This statistic

demonstrates the damage being done. With the number of registered vehicles being

disproportionate to the amount of fuel consumed. The excessive combustion of gasoline and

diesel powered vehicles is one of the main reasons transportation has such a large environmental

impact.

While Smil’s work provided an explanation of exactly how climate change works, The

National Academy of Science provided an in depth outline about how the environment has been

impacted and how climate change has been influenced by carbon dioxide and methane emitted

by vehicles. Fossil fuel combustion is the largest source of CO2. We have seen CO2 levels in the

atmosphere increase up to 40% from the preindustrial era to the turn of the 21st century and

maybe even another 40% by the end of the century (Smil, 145). The reason CO2 is so bad for the

environment is largely due to the structure of its bonding. The bonding of CO2 is a resonance

structure which allows CO2 to trap infrared radiation emitted by the sun’s rays. Infrared

radiation contains energy in the form of heat, therefore, the trapping of it within the bonds of

CO2 does not allow it to leave our atmosphere resulting in a gradual warming of the Earth’s

surface (Eser, 2015). Methane is able to trap up to 20 times more infrared radiation than CO2

(Eser, 2015).

The United States is home to one third of the passenger vehicles in the world and 86% of

the energy used by these vehicles is petroleum based (National Academy of the Sciences, 2013).

The EIA also listed the transportation industry as the largest consumer of petroleum using a

whopping 222 billion gallons of oil in 2006, almost 50% more than the industrial sector

(EIA.Gov, 2014). Unfortunately, these petroleum based products contribute the most to the

overall greenhouse effect: the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's atmosphere due to the

greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation

emitted from the planet's surface (Smil, 34).

In recent years however, society has seen a push to reduce fossil fuel combustion and

sway towards more eco­friendly methods. One of the main and most successful methods is the

hybrid electric car. The EIA and the National Academy of Sciences both yielded statistics, facts,

and projections on the future of hybrid electric cars. This field is rapidly growing and expanded

from the two million hybrid electric cars on the road by the end of 2011 has increased to over

four million by December, 2014 in the United States (EIA.Gov, 2014).

The rapidly growing field of hybrid electric cars is taking place all over the world. Research being conducted in the Netherlands calling for drastic cuts in CO2 emissions suggest

that we may even see the combination of renewable energy and electric cars; for example, wind

turbines powering EV cells which in turn power vehicles (Bellekom, Benders, Pelgrom, Moll,

2012).

Discussion:

As suburbanization occurred out of major metropolises, new forms of transportation were

necessary for individuals to commute to their daily jobs. Differently powered vehicles that used

different sources of energy competed with each other in an attempt to become the newest form of

convenient transportation. Most individuals don’t know that the first electric car was actually

constructed in 1834 by the American inventor Thomas Davenport (Helmers and Marx, 2012).

The other alternative for road transportation was the internal combustion engine put into effect

by Nikolaus Otto. Once Henry Ford initiated the idea of mass production with the internal

combustion engine, battery electric vehicles were somewhat abandoned. As successful as the

idea of the internal combustion engine has been, the impact, environmentally, has burdened us

on a global scale. If engineer’s and environmental agencies had initially known the detrimental

effect burning fossil fuels would have on our ecosystem, more thought and regulation may

have been a priority in the making of petroleum reliant cars.

Two types of electric based cars are battery electric vehicles and plug in hybrid electric

vehicles. The splitting difference between the two is that electric based cars operate solely on the

energy contained by the battery charged from a power grid, whereas plug in electric hybrid cars

also have an internal combustion engine in addition to the battery (The National Academies,

2015). Most electric car engines have a lithium ion battery basis, which is chemically stable and

efficient in terms of producing a significant amount of energy for an electric car to run properly.

The idea of the hybrid car involves the use of the internal combustion engine initiating once the

battery’s charge is depleted, which would extend the range of travel by the car. One might ask

how this is an alternative to the internal combustion engines we already are utilizing? The idea of

the hybrid electric car is to slowly make the consumer to less reliant on fossil fuel forms of

transportation. A popular example of a hybrid electric car is the Toyota Prius, which is extremely

efficient in terms of utilizing energy, shutting off the internal combustion engine when the car is

not in motion and accelerating with an electric motor. Charging of the electric battery is done

through “regenerative braking” that uses the electric motor as a generator. Although the hybrid

cars may have an internal combustion engine, they are used in the circumstance of the battery

running out of energy, therefore minimizing the use of the internal combustion engine. A

comparable decrease in petroleum consumption would be evident when put up against cars that

only utilize gasoline.

The common argument on why electric cars may not be as beneficial as internal

combustion engine cars deals with the limitation of range and the availability of recharging an

individual’s battery when fully depleted. It is actually surprising to most individuals that an

electric car can span the range of one full tank of gasoline on one full battery charge (The

National Academies, 2014). Current models of electric cars, such as the Tesla Roadster, which

can clear roughly 250 miles on one charge, are slowly being sold to individuals who can afford

them (Tesla Motors, 2015). A study conducted by Rob van Haaren from Columbia University,

showed that 80% of US citizens would want a range of at least 100 miles on an electric car after

one charge. This is reasonable, but purchasing an electric car is currently expensive due to the

petroleum industries domination over the market. More affordable electric cars like Nissan’s

LEAF model, however, produce a smaller range regarding mileage from only one battery charge.

Change is occurring and has already been implemented into society by progressive companies

like Tesla and Nissan. The following figure is representative of current electric cars that are on

the market:

http://www.ehcar.net/library/rapport/rapport054.pdf The technology is present for any customers who are willing to pay for it. However, as

long as consumers are content with cheap gasoline prices, there is no motivation to make

a shift in transportation that will be beneficial in the long run.

Because cars spend most of their time in a garage or workplace parking lot,

recharging one’s vehicle should be a simple task as long as there are sufficient charging

stations available. Most consumers question the amount of time a vehicle takes to fully

recharge as well. Depending on the battery type, electrical generator, and car model, some

batteries take up to 48 hours to charge, while some may only take 30 minutes. The Electric

Power Research Institute defined three charging levels for electric cars for the U.S.

Department of Energy, which were codified in the National Electric Code (NEC), along

with their safety systems and functionality (Morrow, Karner, and Francfort, 2008). Level

one can accumulate the smallest amount of electrical power at 1.4 kW. Level two can

accumulate around double level one at 3.3 kW. Level three is the fastest and most powerful

charger, which can accumulate around 60150 kW of power through different charging

equipment. Although the level three charge could be applicable in any place, it would be

more reasonably found in a charging station. Due to it’s expensive nature and higher energy

accumulation, it would be more sensible to implement a level three charger in a

commercialized station where consumers can rapidly charge their cars. A level one or level

two charger, which recharges slower and accumulates significantly less power, would be

more commonly implemented into a home system within a garage. Some options the

government could implement as a system involving electric based cars are public charging

stations being available throughout communities in which a universal plug is utilized. The

implementation portion of this task is the difficult part. As long as consumers are content

with cheap gasoline prices, there is no motivation to make a shift in transportation that will

be beneficial in the long run. Once in perspective, however, individuals will realize a shift

in the use of transportation is necessary due to the inevitable environmental consequences

of burning of fossil fuels.

Scientists and researchers are now convinced that human activity has been shaping the

warming temperatures within Earth’s atmosphere. More than 90% of the transportation sector is

driven by oil (EIA.gov, 2014). The burning of fossil fuels at a steady rate has deposited

thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide on our planet, therefore causing an effect we know

commonly as global warming. Global warming occurs from the Earth not being able to reflect

enough heat back into space. The heat is supposed to be reflected off the ground and back into

space through infrared radiation. However, the accumulation of greenhouse gases like methane,

carbon dioxide and CFC’s contribute to the trapping of the leaving heat within their bonds. As a

result, by the early twenty first century, atmospheric levels of CO2 were about forty per cent

higher than during the preindustrial era and contributed to increased rate of climate change

(Smil, 145). At the rate consumers are purchasing gasoline, as opposed to buying non electric

vehicles, the Earth’s environment and climate change will have a detrimental effect on its

inhabitants.

Many individuals are looking for the truth, regarding how effective it would be to switch

from petroleum powered vehicles to electric ones. Although it is hard to say, one ideology is

inarguably true: switching to electrically powered vehicles will only benefit each individuals

and future generations. In the Journal of Power Sources, van Vliet and colleagues conducted

research regarding the effect on greenhouse gas emissions from switching to electric cars.

Roughly, they found that even by switching to plug in hybrid electric cars, greenhouse gas

emissions can be reduced from driving by more than 70% compared to diesel and petroleum cars

and more than 55% compared to other hybrids that use petroleum (Van Vliet, 2015). A single

individual may not be able to completely transition a global economy from using fossil fuel

based cars to electric ones, but they can inform those around them. Education and the

availability of accurate and factual information about fossil fuel based cars and its environmental

impact will contribute a significant amount to changing the outlook on transportation. Although

the movement may be slow, accomplishments are being made in small steps.

Conclusion:

As time progresses, so does the modernization of evolving communities. Transportation

has come a long way since the concept initially took off thousands of years ago. With the most

simplistic blueprints for the earliest forms of transportation, getting from one destination to

another has changed throughout history, depending on resource availability and geographic

distribution. Globalization between different nations is one of the biggest factors affected by

transportation because of its stimulating effect upon development and innovation.

Transportation greatly impacts and shapes a country's trade, people, and geographic boundaries.

Efficiency of transportation is also an important factor in which some forms of travel

were more beneficial than others. The takeaway for transportation efficiency is that in the past,

engineers maximized efficiency while also implementing the cheapest available products for

the consumers. American automobiles and vehicles contribute much to our national carbon

dioxide emission levels. As stated earlier, carbon dioxide emissions have an enormous impact

on our environment and the rate of climate change. While petroleum based fuels like gasoline

and diesel have served Americans well throughout history, it is vital to switch to a more energy

efficient and environmentally respectful mode.

Most individuals would prefer the ease of purchasing oil over the perceived

inconvenience of recharging their electric cars every 100 miles. Human economic convenience

is closely connected to environmental sustainability. However, innovations and expansions in

the hybrid electric market suggest much more efficient and affordable versions of automobiles

to come. The outlook for transportation is ever changing but human motivation and necessity

will ultimately determine the prospective transportation models in our future.

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