Hybrid Cars

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Ethanol, EV/Plug-in, Green Culture, Hybrid, Chevrolet, GM Decked out in enough stickers to make a NASCAR driver jealous, the cars in the EcoCar 2 competition finished year two of their three-year journey last week, with Penn State declared the winner. Fifteen universities are taking part in EcoCar 2, which involves taking a 2013 Chevy Malibu and making it as green as possible. The final challenges of Year Two were to conduct drives at the GM Desert Proving Ground in Yuma, AZ and then undergo a round of judging in San Diego, CA. As you might suspect, this gives room for winners in a number of categories (see the list here), but it was Penn State that managed to win the overall title. The teams are allowed (encouraged, actually) to modify the powertrain, which is why Penn State's Malibu is a E85 plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Cal State Los Angles also uses ethanol in its second-place vehicle. Ohio State University turned its Malibu into a parallel hybrid electric vehicle, which was good enough for third place. Over the next year, the final one before (we suspect) the third EcoCar gets rolling, the schools and teams will continue to work on the program's goals, which include building cars that, in the words of the organizers: Reduce petroleum energy consumption on the basis of a total fuel cycle analysis; Reduce fuel consumption; Reduce well to wheel greenhouse gas emissions; Reduce criteria tailpipe emissions; Maintain consumer acceptability in the area of performance, utility, and safety. EcoCar 2's main sponsors are General Motors and the US Department of Energy, but there are many more, which you can see in the press release below, where you'll also find a video. The overall winning student team will be named next year in Washington, DC.Continue reading E85 plug-in hybrid Chevy Malibu powers Penn State to second year EcoCar 2 win [w/video]E85 plug-in hybrid Chevy Malibu powers Penn State to second year EcoCar 2 win [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Sat, 25 May 2013 16:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

The new 2014 Chevrolet Impala is a big five-passenger family sedan, the largest one Chevy sells. While it was launched earlier this year with a 303-horsepower 3.6-liter V-6 engine, it can now also be ordered with a 196-hp, 2.5-liter four-cylinder Ecotec engine that produces 186 lb-ft of torque. That would seem to be a small engine in a big car...

Schematic chart showing included stages within OPGEE. El Houjeiri et al., Supplemental Information. Click to enlarge. A team from Stanford University and the California Air Resources Board (ARB) has developed a new open-source lifecycle analysis (LCA) tool for modeling the greenhouse gas emissions of oil and gas production using characteristics of specific fields and associated production pathways. The team describes the Oil Production Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimator (OPGEE) in a paper in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Existing transportation fuel cycle emissions models are either broad—i.e., lacking process-level detail for any particular fuel pathway—and calculate nonspecific values of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from crude oil production, or are not available for public review and auditing, the authors note. Emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from crude oil production vary significantly depending on production practices and crude oil qualities. The use of energy-intensive secondary and tertiary recovery technologies can have significant impacts on emissions. Other major factors are venting, flaring and fugitive (VFF) emissions, which are difficult to measure and estimate. Previous studies show that upstream, well-to-refinery gate (WTR) emissions vary by a factor of 10 from low emissions to high emissions fields. This variability highlights the importance of having the capability to assess the different types of crude oil production operations and under different conditions. Regulatory approaches, such as the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and European Fuel Quality Directive (EU FQD), seek to regulate the life cycle GHG emissions for transport fuels. ...To advance the modeling of crude oil production GHGs in a transparent manner, the Oil Production Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimator (OPGEE) has been developed. OPGEE is built with the goals of achieving more accuracy and better transparency in the assessment of life cycle GHG emissions from crude oil production. OPGEE calculates the energy use and emissions from crude oil production using engineering fundamentals of petroleum production and processing. This allows the model to flexibly estimate emissions from a variety of oil production emissions sources. —El-Houjeiri et al. In their paper, Hassan El-Houjeiri and Adam Brandt from Stanford, and James Duffy from ARB, introduce OPGEE and its structure, modeling methods, and data sources, then run it in default mode and on a small set of fictional fields (based on real California fields) selected to have varying characteristics and meant to represent a variety of possible operations. These serve to anchor the sensitivity analysis. The results show the GHG emissions breakdown and the sensitivity of emissions to selected input parameters. The functional unit of OPGEE is 1 MJ of crude petroleum delivered to the refinery entrance (a well-to-refinery, or WTR system boundary), with emissions presented as gCO2 equiv GHGs per MJ of crude at the refinery gate. This functional unit is held constant across different production processes included in OPGEE. The energy content of crude oil at the refinery gate is calculated based on API gravity (no account of effects of other crude oil characteristics such as sulfur content). OPGEE defaults to lower heating value (LHV) basis for all calculations, but model results can also be presented on higher heating value (HHV) basis. Basic structure of OPGEE. Credit: ACS, El-Houjeiri et al. Click to enlarge. OPGEE calculations use a bottom-up engineering-based approach. OPGEE relies on dozens of calculations across all stages of oil production, processing and transport. Data for the four fictional fields used in the paper (A, B, C, D) are derived from the online production and injection database and technical reports from the California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas, and

Alcoa expects its $21-million Alcoa Wheel and Transportation Products casthouse expansion at its Barberton, Ohio plant to cut in half the total amount of energy used to recycle aluminum for forged wheels, reducing greenhouse gases and increasing the overall efficiency and sustainability of the company’s manufacturing process. The recycling facility, the first of its kind in North America, produces wheels from re-melted and scrap aluminum. Construction of the 50,000-square-foot facility, which can process 100 million pounds of scrap aluminum each year, began in July 2011. It is now up and running at full capacity. 100 million pounds of recycled scrap aluminum is enough to make 2 million new Alcoa forged aluminum wheels. The casthouse takes chips and solids from an existing Alcoa wheel machining plant on the same campus in Barberton, as well as from Alcoa’s Cleveland forging plant, and recycles them into aluminum billets. The billets are then shipped to other wheel-processing facilities to forge into aluminum wheels. The casthouse is expected to reduce significantly energy use through a combination of process improvements and reduced transportation needs. The facility is located on the campus of an existing production facility, which has led an approximately 90% cut in transportation-related energy use. Aluminum wheels reduce the overall weight of the vehicle, which improves fuel efficiency and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. This project is also part of the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge, through which we will share best practices—such as linking energy goals to compensation—to help other companies reduce their industrial energy intensity.—Kevin Anton, Alcoa’s Chief Sustainability Officer

AID (Automotive Industry Data) reports that first-time registrations in April of electric vehicles in Western Europe were up almost one-half to just under 2,600 units, representing 0.26% of the region’s new car market. Registrations of electric cars this April were up in eight markets, down in seven, AID reported. France, thanks to the launch of the Renault ZOE, currently ranks as the region’s largest electric car market, with 3,188 new electric car registrations during the first four months of this year. French electric car registrations in April more than doubled to 940 units, according to AID.

Filed under: MPG, Legislation and Policy, USA Americans are about to spend a lot of money on gasoline. If the number crunchers at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) are correct, US drivers will spend a tidy $1.44 billion filling up for their Memorial Day travels as 31.2 million people use the long weekend to participate in the time-honored tradition of a road trip. Almost nine out of 10 Americans (89 percent, by UCS estimates) who will travel this weekend are expected to do so by passenger car or truck and therefore will spend the equivalent of 77 million bottles of sunscreen or 300 million cones of ice cream on petroleum. That gas tab will theoretically go up a tad after that ice cream's polished off and the collective weight's put on, of course. The holiday spending number would be cut in half if we had tomorrow's cars today. The UCS says that if we were driving the average new vehicle from 2025 - which will have an average fuel economy that's roughly twice as high today - we would be paying about $619 million less on gasoline this weekend. Which means more ice cream and sunscreen for all of us. Check out the UCS press release below.Continue reading Memorial Day weekend gas tab likely to hit $1.44 billion in USMemorial Day weekend gas tab likely to hit $1.44 billion in US originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 24 May 2013 19:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Diesel, Hybrid, BMW Hey, for some, $4,800 is the price of their next car. For the Ultimate Driving Machine, it's the price difference between a diesel and a hybrid. BMW has released pricing specs for its 2014 model-year 5 Series sedans, and it turns out that the German automaker appears to view diesel as a superior way to hit stricter fuel-economy standards compared to hybrids. How do we know? Bimmer is pricing its 535d sedan at $57,525. Not only does the oil burner deliver 255 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque, but it's less expensive than the ActiveHybrid 5, which checks in at $62,325. Of course, one could scrap any pretense of fuel economy and go for the V8 with TwinPower Turbo, which delivers a whopping 445 horsepower and 480 pound-feet of torque - and a fuel economy rating that will likely displease the treehuggers of the world. Check out BMW's really long press release below.Continue reading 2014 BMW 5 Series diesel costs $4,800 less than ActiveHybrid in US2014 BMW 5 Series diesel costs $4,800 less than ActiveHybrid in US originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 24 May 2013 18:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

As far as official info goes, it is anyone’s guess, but anonymous sources have said Henrik Fisker is working with Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li in one of two potential bids to keep Fisker Automotive’s name alive. Henrik Fisker abruptly left the company he co-founded six years ago in March this year, and Reuters says the investors are discussing purchase of the U.S. Department of Energy’s outstanding loan – at pennies on the dollar – along with avoiding bankruptcy by Fisker Automotive. The Energy Department is owed $171 million and provisions could allow it to try and negotiate what amounts to damage control and selling off the debt at a loss to minimize otherwise greater loss to taxpayers. The other group said to be thinking about doing something similar to Li and Henrik Fisker, as previously reported, includes Bob Lutz – the “L” in VL Automotive which already has a Web site with Fisker bodied, Corvette-engined cars, but without a reliable supply of the needed bodies. Lutz and company are looking at snapping up the former 400-plus employee company at fire sale prices of $20 million, and sources said this could crest higher, and may need to, given more money is reportedly on offer by Li and his group. Sources have agreed avoiding bankruptcy could be desirable for Fisker in maximizing what value it can return to investors. Henrik Fisker has reportedly been communicating with potential investors to get in on a deal to revive his former company. What role the talented designer who has also penned Aston Martins and BMWs remains unclear. The group he’s said to be involved with led by Li has reportedly bid on the outstanding Energy Department loan for a sum in the range of $25 million to $30 million. While higher than what the group Lutz had initially offered, it amounts to 17.5 cents on the dollar back to U.S. taxpayers. Anything could happen, however, and inquiries to Fisker Automotive, and others involved have gone unanswered. Automotive News The post Will Fisker Help Revive A New Fisker? appeared first on HybridCars.com.

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Ormat Industries Ltd. in Israel report the development of a comercially-viable, one-step catalytic hydrotreating process for the conversion of soybean oil to renewable diesel-type fuel in a paper in the journal Fuel. The conversion of soybean oil to green diesel was carried out on Pt/SAPO-11-Al2O3 catalyst in a trickle-bed reactor. Steady-state operation was reached after about 150 h. The steady-state performance was recorded at 375–380 °C, 30 atm and LHSV = 1 h?1. The green diesel produced in this study was characterized according to ASTM procedures by a certified lab. Most of its properties were found to fit the standard of qualified diesel fuel (European standard EN-590) making it an excellent component for diesel fuel blends. Resources Moti Herskowitz, Miron V. Landau, Yehudit Reizner, Dov Berger (2013) A commercially-viable, one-step process for production of green diesel from soybean oil on Pt/SAPO-11, Fuel, Volume 111 Pages 157-164, doi: 10.1016/j.fuel.2013.04.044

Cycling behavior of TEGDME-based electrolyte lithium?oxygen cells; capacity limited to 1000 mAh g?1carbon. Credit: ACS, Park et al. Click to enlarge. A team including researchers from Hanyang University (South Korea) and University of Rome Sapienza (Italy) have shown that operating temperature plays an important role in the performance of Lithium-air batteries. They also demonstrated “to the best of our knowledge for the first time” that a lithium-air battery, fabricated with optimized electrodes and electrolyte, may successfully operate in a temperature range extending from ?10 to 70 °C. The electrochemical and morphological study of the response of Li-air cells cycled at various temperatures is published in the ACS journal Nano Letters. Lithium-air (or Li-oxygen) batteries are attracting a great deal of research interest due their very high energy densities, and thus their potential application in electric vehicles. In its most classical configuration, the Li/O2 battery is formed by a lithium metal anode, a liquid organic electrolyte and a carbon-supported (with or without catalyst) air electrode. Recently, a new configuration, where the lithium metal is replaced by a lithium alloy silicon anode, has also been reported. Key parameters in assuring proper Li/O2 battery behavior are (i) the optimization of the positive electrode structure, in terms of use of an adequate gas diffusion layer and of effective catalysts, and (ii) the choice of an electrolyte stable to superoxide attack. It is in fact well-known that the basic electrochemical cell process, leading to the reversible formation and dissolution of lithium peroxide, involves an intermediate oxygen anion radical O2?•, namely, a highly reactive base that readily attacks and decomposes conventional electrolytes, such as organic carbonate solutions. Dimethoxyethane (DME)-based and ionic liquid-based solutions have been proposed as alternative electrolyte media, however with little success. Recent works demonstrated that the best results in terms of Li/O2 battery stability and cycling may be obtained with the use of long chain, ether-based glymes, such as tetraethylene glycol dimethyl ether (TEGDME) electrolyte solutions. [Earlier post.] In a previous paper we have reported a detailed transmission electron microscopy (TEM) study showing that Li/O2 batteries based on the TEGDME-LiCF3SO3 electrolyte indeed show a very promising behavior at room temperature. In this paper we extend the study by investigating the role of temperature on influencing the response of Li/TEGDME-LiCF3SO3/O2 cells.—Park et al. The Li-air cells in the study were based on a specially developed gas diffusion layer (GDL) oxygen electrode and on a TEGDME-LiCF3SO3 electrolyte. The gas diffusion layer was coated with Super-P carbon as matrix to host the lithium oxygen reaction products (Li2O2 nanospheres and hollow nanospheres formed at the interface with the tetraglyme-based solution). All of the cycles were run under a fixed capacity regime of 1000 mAh g?1carbon. Low temperatures resulted in a rate decrease, due to a reduced diffusion of the lithium ions from the electrolyte to the electrode interface. High temperatures resulted in a rate enhancement, due to the decreased electrolyte viscosity and consequent increased oxygen mobility. They also showed that the temperature also influences the crystallinity of lithium peroxide formed during cell discharge. Resources Jin-Bum Park, Jusef Hassoun, Hun-Gi Jung, Hee-Soo Kim, Chong Seung Yoon, In-Hwan Oh, Bruno Scrosati, and Yang-Kook Sun (2013) Influence of Temperature on Lithium–Oxygen Battery Behavior. Nano Letters doi: 10.1021/nl401439b