Well-to-Wheel analysis of natural gas fuel for hybrid truck applications

Following the tendency of sustainable development, compressed natural gas as an alternative fuel has been expanded applied in the transportation sector these years. Although several studies on the life cycle are quite comprehensive for passenger vehicles, it is problematic to apply these results to heavy-duty electric hybrid trucks. This study applies the Well-to-Wheel methodology on compressed natural gas fuel. The optimized hybrid electric truck model is built up to minimize the truck performance variation. The total CO2 equivalent emissions and the methane leakage as indicators are compared among the three largest emitting countries. The results indicate that compressed natural gas-based hybrid trucks have 9.1%-18.7% less CO2 equivalent emissions than diesel-based ones and the results are more obvious for heavy-duty trucks. Nevertheless, this advantage may be minimized by methane leakage, particularly in the recovery process, accounted for 7.3% Total CO2 equivalent emissions increase in North America, 5.1% in Europe, 5.3% in China from well to wheel. Applying natural gas in hybrid electric trucks does have environmental benefits. Methane capturing and compression efficient improving can be the faster ways to help reach the emission reduction target.