Energy Consumption And Environmental Impact Assessment Of HEV Manufacturing

With the continued increase in vehicle production and ownership, environmentalpollution from automobiles has become more and more serious, and transportation oilconsumption has accounted for more than60%of the total oil consumption. As a kind ofelectric vehicle, the hybrid vehicles can reduce vehicle energy consumption andenvironmental pollution significantly in the process of moving, therefore is considered to becommercialized in the next20years to30years to replace the internal combustion enginevehicle. However, an additional electric drive system, will inevitably lead to increase inparts, and the manufacturing process will be more complicated. Look at these aspects fromraw material production, automotive parts manufacturing, vehicle assembly, the negativeimpact on the ecological environment must be more serious.As a widely recognized environmental impact assessment method in the field ofinternational environmental and energy research, life cycle assessment （Life CycleAssessment, the LCA） has become a research focal point of governments, domestic andinternational environmental organizations. In this paper, based on the theories and methodsof life cycle assessment, writer chooses a hybrid vehicle which has been marketed andachieved considerable success as the object of this study. Combined with the car’s structure,materials and manufacturing processes, writer set up an easy-to-understand computingmodel for the energy consumption and environmental impact assessment of hybrid electricvehicle’s manufacture. With the help of GREET software, we got calculation results of theevaluation: to produce a HEV of this kind consumes26725.01kWh energy, emits3332gVOC,88350g CO,13341g NOx,25967g PM10,9790g PM2.5,35689g Sox,10486g CH4,19g N2O,9692726g CO₂, and total GHGs emission is10119594g carbon dioxideequivalent.Through analyzing the Fossil energy, total energy, Standard emissions and GHGs emissions of four links which is named "material" production, vehicle assembly, batterymanufacturing and vehicle fluid production, we got the following conclusions: firstly, coalis the main energy, accounting for82.3%of the total energy consumption; secondly, miningof raw materials refining and parts processing, which is called "Material" production,account for72.6%of the total energy consumption and75.6%of the total GHGs emissions.Therefore, the authors did single factor sensitivity analysis on recycled material using,electrical energy structure and lightweight body three factors. In these three factors, thestructure of electrical energy is the most sensitive factor. It can reduce energy consumptionby724.323kWh and carbon dioxide equivalent by384716g per vehicle, when Theproportion of nuclear power increased by10%, and the proportion of coal-fired powerreduced by10%.According to the manufacturing process LCA results and sensitivity analysis results,the authors propose a few recommendations to ameliorate the evaluation:1. Improve thevehicle disposal and recycling system;2. Establish the recycling and re-use system ofnon-ferrous metals;3. Develop clean electrical energy resources, and raise conversionefficiency of coal energy;4. Use optimized structural design and high strength steel toachieve a lightweight body;5. Increase government support for HEV industry.