The Research On Inland Waterway Freight Transportation For Materials Life Cycle Assessment

Transportation is of a great importance to the whole industrial production system, with serious energy consumption and environmental pollution. The research on its related energy and environmental problems is crucial to the sustainable development of transportation, and what's more, transportation is a major consideration for almost all of the life cycle assessment (LCA) and its life cycle inventory (LCI) is fundamental for related LCI and LCA. Inland waterway freight is an important mode of transport in China. In this paper, energy and environmental problems of inland waterway freight in China was analyzed and assessed. It is not only providing the basic transportation data for related materials LCA research but also clarifying related conditions of energy and environment from transportation itself.In this paper, river freights in the Yangtze River cargo vessel, The Yangtze River barge fleet, the Yangtze River tributary and the Pearl River cargo vessel were investigated. Based on the actual situation in China, the model of these four typical conditions was established, and the life cycle inventories for inland waterway transportation were established by the models. The inventoried obtained shall become the basis of life cycle management of all kinds of materials and products. This paper also analyzed and assessed resource consumption and environmental emission from river freight transportation on the basis of life cycle inventory.LCI results show that CO₂ is the largest emission of pollutants for inland waterway freight transport in China. CO₂ emission of 1000t ? km freight turnover is 25.2kg, 6.68kg, 31.7kg and 34.5kg for the Yangtze River cargo vessel, the Yangtze River barge fleet, the Yangtze River tributary cargo vessel and the Pearl River cargo vessel respectively. LCIA results show that the biggest impact category of river transportation is acidification potential, accounting for the total environmental impact of 37.30%, 38.17%, 34.61% and 38.17% for each ways of transportation respectively. The most important environmental load of river freight transport is NOx emission, which contributes 56.31%, 57.72%, 52.09% and 57.72% to the environmental impact of the four ways of transport respectively. The environmental impact of completing the same cargo turnover in small to large order is the Yangtze River barge fleet, the Yangtze River cargo vessel, the Yangtze River tributary cargo vessel and the Pearl River cargo vessel.The results show that accomplishing the same cargo turnover, heavy truck have the largest environmental impact, and the railway freight has the minimum environmental impact; environmental impact of the Yangtze River fleet is close to the railway freight. In this paper, the overall environmental impact in 2005 was compared. The comparison shows that the overall environmental impact of shipping methods in decreasing order is roads, railways, Yangtze River cargo and Pearl River cargo.