Better Roads Magazine, 13 November 2011
Scientists at the University of California-Riverside’s Center for Environmental Research and Technology have received a $2 million contract for a first-of-its-kind study of hybrid construction vehicles.
The two-year project, which is being funded by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), will allow researchers to evaluate the emissions-reduction benefits of two commercially-available hybrid construction vehicles: a Caterpillar dozer and a Komatsu hydraulic excavator.
“Hybrid construction vehicles are just now becoming available,” Kent Johnson, an assistant research engineer at the Center for Environmental Research and Technology and the principal investigator on the project, says in a written statement. “We have been asked to use our emissions-testing experience to quantify what their benefit is.”
Little is known about the potential benefits of hybrid technologies for construction equipment because of their unique and diverse duty cycles. Manufacturers say the hybrid vehicles reduce fuel needs by 20 percent and cut emissions by 30 percent, according to Johnson. Vehicles behavior will be characterized on a second-by-second basis during in-use operations at construction sites using portable emission-measurement systems. Researchers will design standardized tasks, such as lifting a heavy object.
