Date of Award
10-19-2015
Publication Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.Sc.
Department
Mechanical, Automotive, and Materials Engineering
Keywords
BEV, Bi-Fuel, LCA, Life Cycle Assessment, Methodology, Passenger car
Supervisor
Tam, Edwin
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This thesis examines various guidelines for conducting LCA studies on passenger vehicles, and ultimately develops a new LCA guideline. The new guideline balances workload and capturing the major factors of the vehicle’s life cycle. For the analysis, three guidelines were applied to multiple FCA vehicles, representing conventional and alternative fuel drivetrains. The results of each guideline were assessed for their sources of variation, and the weight of each variable on the vehicle lifecycle. From the results, the vehicle’s material breakdown, basic driving emissions, use of climate control systems, and maintenance of parts, were found to have the highest environmental impact. The new guideline was developed and applied to the same case studies, maintaining close agreement with the previous results. The results were also compared to LCA studies from other manufacturers. Impact categories that depend on the use phase showed little variation, but production dominated categories showed large discrepancies between manufacturers.
Recommended Citation
Capitano, Kyle Jordan, "Methodologies for Life Cycle Assessment of Passenger Vehicles" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5460.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/5460