Abstract
This first chapter presents the background information on the environmental issues the On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) system—the electric vehicle that receives electric power wirelessly from the underground electric power supply—is designed to address. It then reviews CO2 emission by internal combustion (IC) engines after providing a brief history of IC engines. Following a review of the history of electric technologies that led to current electric vehicles, the rationale for electrifying ground transportation systems (EGTSs) is presented. Many of the current electric vehicles (EVs) use a large bank of lithium batteries, which has shortcomings associated with its cost, weight, bulkiness, and fire hazard. To overcome these shortcomings, OLEV was created.
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Notes
- 1.
Kiehl et al. [1].
- 2.
According to the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA), CO2 accounted for 82% of greenhouse gas emission in the USA in 2013. http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html.
- 3.
IPCC, Climate Change 2012 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers (https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf), p. 20. Two recent studies suggest that the IPCC report was conservative in its estimates. A joint paper by NASA and the University of California at Irvine, based on forty years of data collected via satellites and aircraft, predicts that the continued melting of a major section of the ice sheet in west Antarctica will raise the sea level by four feet (1.2 m). A similar conclusion was reached in a study from the University of Washington, which predicted that if the current trend continues, the sea level may rise as much as 12 feet (3.7 m). See Eric Rignot, NASA–University California at Irvine research report, May 13, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/earth/collapse-of-parts-of-west-antarctica-ice-sheet-has-begun-scientists-say.html?_r=0; Joughin et al. [2] The State of Florida may become a much smaller state, since its mean elevation is only about one hundred feet.
- 4.
Scientific knowledge about historical levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is deduced from measurement of the air trapped in ice [3]. Such measurements indicate that cyclic variations of incident solar energy began at least 800,000 years ago, with each cycle lasting roughly 100,000 years. Until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (around 1750), concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere had not deviated from this cyclic variation. However, since the Industrial Revolution, with the invention of the steam engine by James Watt and the subsequent development of other energy-intensive technology, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has continuously increased from about 280 ppm in 1750 to about 392 ppm in 2012 and is heading higher every year [3, 4].
- 5.
A summary of the IPCC findings is given in “Climate Change 2014, Synthesis Report Summary for Policy Makers”; https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pd.
- 6.
The source of CO2 generation is, of course, country specific. In the USA, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the combustion of fossil fuels to generate electricity is the largest source of CO2 emissions, accounting for about 37% of the total CO2 emission and 31% of total greenhouse gas emitted in 2013 in the USA. The type of fuel used to generate electricity emits different amounts of CO2, coal producing more CO2 than natural gas or oil. Transportation is the second largest source of CO2 in the USA. The combustion of fossil fuels in transportation—primarily gasoline and diesel by automobiles, kerosene by airplanes, and diesel by ships, and trains—generates about 31% of the total US CO2 emission and 26% of total US greenhouse gas emissions in 2013.
- 7.
For a more complete listing of inventions related to IC engines, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_internal_combustion_engine#Further_reading.
- 8.
London-based IHS Automotive puts light vehicle (passenger car and light-duty truck) production in 2013 at 84.7 million, up from 81.5 million in 2012. (Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d’Automobiles), Paris in 1919.
- 9.
Data from the International Energy Agency. http://www.iea.org/aboutus/faqs/oil/.
- 10.
Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=33&t=6.
- 11.
As of 2013, the USA was the largest oil-consuming nation in the world, using about 19% of the world’s supply. Korea was tenth, at 2.4% [Data from U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)].
- 12.
Twenty-eighty percent of the energy the US consumes, and 71% of the oil, is used for transportation: 48% for automobiles, 16% for diesel vehicles, and 7% for airplanes (National Academies 2008).
- 13.
In terms of well-to-wheel efficiency, only about 17% of the energy in crude oil goes to the wheel, since 15% of the energy is consumed in the refining process (Wang 2006).
- 14.
The health consequences of air pollution from automobiles with IC engines fueled by petroleum are an important factor to consider. People who are exposed to ultrafine particulates (UFP), black carbon particles (BC), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and carbon monoxide (CO) emitted by automobiles with internal combustion engines have higher incidences of asthma and cancer, and the death rate due to the heart and lung disease of people living near roads with heavy traffic is almost twice the norm and 1.4 times higher than overall death rate. For every increase in particulate exposure of 10 mcg/m3, risk increased by 4% for mortality, 6% in cardiopulmonary mortality, and 8% in lung cancer mortality [8–12]. Modern automobile engines are tightly controlled for complete combustion and outfitted with catalytic converters that further reduce partially combusted hydrocarbon, and today’s fuels are much cleaner than in the past in terms of sulfur content and other harmful chemicals. Yet 50% of the nitrogen oxides in air have been attributed to traffic. The World Health Organization (WHO) states the following: “… in parts of Europe where stricter standards and regulations for vehicles have been enforced, ambient air pollution levels are stable or continue to rise [sic, due to more vehicles]. Per kilometer of travel, diesel vehicles also typically emit more particulate emissions than gasoline, gas-powered, or electric vehicles of comparable size and age –so that increased reliance on diesel vehicles in the vehicle fleet may be a contributing factor to health-harmful air pollution in many cities. Diesel emissions have also been defined by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer as a carcinogen.” http://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/faqs_air_pollution.pdf.
- 15.
IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change, Chap. 8, p 603.
- 16.
Gas turbine efficiency ranges from 40% (single cycle) to 60% (combined cycle). http://www.cospp.com/articles/print/volume-11/issue-3/features/gas-turbines-breaking.html.
- 17.
The electric streetcar is not a recent invention, the first one in the USA having been installed in 1885 in South Bend, Indiana.
- 18.
In 1828, Ányos Jedlik of Hungary invented an electric motor and created a small model car powered by it. In 1834, Moritz Jacobi of Germany created a rotating electric motor, which was followed by the work of Sibrandus Stratingh of the Netherlands and his assistant Christopher Becker, who built an electric motor that powered a small model car in 1835. These engineering breakthroughs followed upon prior contributions by many others: the invention of the electric battery by Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist and chemist, in 1800; the scientific work of Hans Christian Øersted, a Danish physicist, who in 1820 demonstrated the generation of a magnetic field around electric wire when current flows in it; the creation of the electromagnet by the English physicist William Sturgeon in 1825; and the theoretical contributions to the understanding of electromagnetism by Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz, a Russian physicist, in 1833. In the USA, Thomas Davenport received the first patent for an electric motor in 1837. In 1859, the French physicist Gaston Planté invented the lead–acid battery, which is still used in automobiles to operate auxiliary equipment although it cannot be used to propel the vehicle because it lacks sufficient energy to provide reasonable driving range and because its discharge rates (i.e., current density) are too slow to accelerate heavy vehicles quickly.
- 19.
The first commercial lithium batteries were sold in 1970, although the experiments with lithium batteries had begun in 1912.
- 20.
Lead–acid (Pb–acid) batteries are 50–92% efficient, and nickel–metal hydride (NIMH) batteries are 66% efficient. Given the cumulative efficiencies of generating electricity, grid loss, charge and discharge losses, the well–wheel efficiency of the lithium-ion battery is 45%, while Pb–acid battery is 0.26–0.48%, and NiMH battery is 0.34%. See Sun [13].
- 21.
https://www.teslamotors.com/support/model-s-specifications, accessed January 20, 2016.
- 22.
“Electric Motor Efficiency and Power factor,” University of Alabama, Note from ME 416/516.
- 23.
It is also conceivable that a new kind of automobile engine could be built using gas turbines. Gas turbine-based IC engines that have a much higher efficiency than reciprocating piston-type IC engines can generate electric power, which is then transmitted wirelessly to an electric motor or motors. The motor(s) can be in wheels that receive electric power wirelessly.
- 24.
Rough estimate, assuming 40% electric power plant energy conversion efficiency, 20% electric transmission loss, 90% electric motor efficiency, 10% loss in inverters, etc.
- 25.
In 2016, Thomson Reuters ranked KAIST as one of the ten highest-ranked most innovative universities in the world together with MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, the only non-US-based university in the top 10.
- 26.
The OLEV technology has received major awards from prominent international organizations. The World Economic Forum selected OLEV as one of the top ten emerging technologies in the world in 2013. Time magazine named it one of the 50 best inventions of 2010. The Korea Railroad Research Institute, together with technologists at KAIST, has applied SMFIR technology to trams and high speed trains, winning the 2014 Innovation Award from the International Union of Railways. These are rare distinctions to be conferred by non-academic organizations on a technology developed at a university.
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Suh, N.P., Cho, D.H. (2017). Making the Move: From Internal Combustion Engines to Wireless Electric Vehicles. In: Suh, N., Cho, D. (eds) The On-line Electric Vehicle. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51183-2_1
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