The European transportation sector employs 10 million people and accounts for 4.6% of the European Union GDP. Due to climate change, this workforce is increasingly affected by high temperatures and radiant loads, particularly during summer. They rely on air conditioning (AC) to minimize heat inside the truck cabins, increasing fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions. Because sustainable transportation is crucial for climate change mitigation, we developed a numerical investigation on the dynamic thermal exchanges of cabins of heavy-duty trucks in realistic conditions of a summer workday, to quantify the potential impact of interventions in the glazing and paint optical properties, over the truck AC loads. We observed that the changes in air temperature and solar irradiation throughout the workday imply substantial variations in the truck’s AC loads and, consequently, in its fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions. Furthermore, windshields and side windows with transmissivity of 0.33 instead of typical 0.79 and 0.84, respectively, can reduce AC loads by up to 16%. External paints with reflectivity of 0.70 instead of 0.04 can reduce the AC loads by up to 30%, whereas cumulative changes to glazing and paint can reduce the AC load by up to 40%. These interventions can lower fuel consumption and emissions by up to 0.4%. These results show that important improvements in fuel efficiency and tailpipe emissions are possible, if the research community, policy makers and industry stakeholders successfully promote the adaptation of the European transportation fleet.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Analysis of the dynamic air conditioning loads, fuel consumption and emissions of heavy-duty trucks with different glazing and paint optical properties


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2022-09-28


    Size :

    14 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    Unknown




    Emissions Characteristics for Heavy-Duty Diesel Trucks Under Different Loads Based on Vehicle-Specific Power

    Zhang, Shuanghong / Yu, Lei / Song, Guohua | Transportation Research Record | 2017


    Towards driving-independent prediction of fuel consumption in heavy-duty trucks

    Farea, Shawqi Mohammed / Mumcuoglu, Mehmet Emin / Unel, Mustafa et al. | IEEE | 2023


    Management of fuel consumption and emissions of heavy goods trucks

    Atif, Muhammad / Aliyu, Aliyu / Mishra, Rakesh | IEEE | 2021


    Fuel Consumption of Heavy-Duty Trucks: Potential Effect of Future Technologies for Improving Energy Efficiency and Emissions

    Saricks, Chris / Vyas, Anant D. / Stodolsky, Frank et al. | Transportation Research Record | 2003


    Fuel Rate Prediction for Heavy-Duty Trucks

    Liu, Liangkai / Li, Wei / Wang, Dawei et al. | IEEE | 2023