Development of Productivity-based Estimating Tool for Fuel Use and Emissions from Earthwork Construction Activities

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Earthwork activities are typically performed by heavy duty diesel (HDD) construction equipment that consumes large quantities of diesel fuel use and emits large quantities of pollutants, including nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matters (PM), hydrocarbon (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), and carbon dioxide (<TEX>$CO_2$</TEX>). This paper presents the framework for a model that can be used to estimate the production rate, activity duration, total fuel use, and total pollutants emissions for earthwork activities. A case study and sensitivity analysis for an excavator performing excavations are presented. The tool is developed by combining the multiple linear regressions (MLR) approach for modeling the productivity with the EPA's NONROAD model. The excavator data from RSMeans Heavy Construction Data were selected to build the productivity model, and emission factors of all type of pollutants from NONROAD model were used to estimate the total fuel use and emissions. The MLR model for the productivity rate can explain 92% of the variability in the data. Based on the model, the fuel use and emissions of excavator increase as the trench depth increase, but as the bucket size increase, the fuel use and emissions decrease.