Energy Use and Emissions from Marine Vessels: A Total Fuel Life Cycle Approach

Abstract

Regional and global air pollution from marine transportation is a growing concern. In discerning the sources of such pollution, researchers have become interested in tracking where along the total fuel life cycle these emissions occur. In addition, new efforts to introduce alternative fuels in marine vessels have raised questions about the energy use and environmental impacts of such fuels. To address these issues, this paper presents the Total Energy & Emissions Analysis for Marine Systems (TEAMS) model. TEAMS can be used to analyze total fuel life cycle emissions and energy use from marine vessels. TEAMS captures “well-to-hull” emissions, that is, emissions along the entire fuel pathway, including extraction, processing, distribution, and use in vessels. TEAMS conducts analyses for six fuel pathways: (1) petroleum to residual oil, (2) petroleum to conventional diesel, (3) petroleum to low-sulfur diesel, (4) natural gas to compressed natural gas, (5) natural gas to Fischer-Tropsch diesel, and (6) soybeans to biodiesel. TEAMS calculates total fuel-cycle emissions of three greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane) and five criteria pollutants (volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters of 10 μm or less, and sulfur oxides). TEAMS also calculates total energy consumption, fossil fuel consumption, and petroleum consumption associated with each of its six fuel cycles. TEAMS can be used to study emissions from a variety of user-defined vessels. This paper presents TEAMS and provides example modeling results for three case studies using alternative fuels: a passenger ferry, a tanker vessel, and a container ship.