Week 5 Recap

          This week we gathered and put our GREET numbers to use. The numbers that we collected were utilized in a vehicle emission scale which we created.  The purpose of the scale is to score each fuel system on it's emissions, so that we may compare them to each other.  The score of each system is calculated from the volume of each compound that the system emits over it's life cycle.  The compounds themselves are ranked on a 1-30 scale, which considers the IDLH concentration (Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health), environmental impact, and flammability/reactivity of each component. From this ranking of the compounds, we can easily distinguish which are the worst, and weigh their measurements more heavily in our emissions scale. 

          This week we focused on testing our scale, the "System Emissions Calculator", on our control, gasoline. Our calculator considers the emissions generated during fuel rendering, fuel transportation, vehicle construction, vehicle transportation, and the actual use of the system.  We have not completed the analysis yet, but the score that we generate for gasoline will be the base line for our calculator results.  This means that the other systems will need to surpass this score in order to be a better choice than gasoline.  As we move into the next couple of weeks, more information will be provided on the blog about our calculator.

Assignments:

• Dan, Bryan, Erik will be meeting this weekend to finish the gasoline calculation and generate values for the other systems using the System Emissions Calculator (SEC).
• Ross and Tiancheng will be gather pricing information for the various types of refueling stations required to operate our systems.