mikhail chester

A project by Mikhail Chester and Professor Arpad Horvath of the University of California, Berkeley. This project was originally the dissertation work of Mikhail Chester. A project website has been created (www.sustainable-transportation.com) to report up-to-date information about the project.

Energy use and emission factors for passenger transportation modes typically ignore the total environmental inventory which includes vehicles, infrastructure, and fuel production components from design through end-of-life processes. A life-cycle inventory for each mode is necessary to appropriately address and attribute the transportation sector's energy and emissions impacts to reduction goals instead of allowing tailpipe factors to act as indicators of total system performance. To appropriately mitigate environmental impacts from transportation, it is necessary for decision makers to consider the life-cycle energy consumption and emissions associated with each mode. We created a comprehensive life-cycle energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and criteria air pollutant emissions inventory for the passenger transportation modes of automobiles, buses, rail, and airplanes in the U.S.. Each mode's inventory includes assessment of vehicles, infrastructure, and fuel components. For each component, analysis is performed from production (or construction) through use in both direct and indirect (supply chain) processes. We find that buses with peak-hour occupancies have the best energy and greenhouse gas performance, followed by rail and air systems, and trailed by automobiles. Air travel is not much worse than rail travel; in some cases even better. Off-peak bus travel is the worst performer. Inventorying criteria air pollutants yields a different ranking of transportation modes. Total life-cycle energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions increase by 46% for onroad, 121% for rail, and 24% for air systems over vehicle tailpipe operation primarily due to vehicle manufacturing and maintenance, infrastructure construction, and fuel production. For criteria air pollutants, non-vehicle operational components often dominate total emissions. Per passenger mile traveled, total SO₂ emissions are 24 times larger than operational emissions for automobiles. NO_X emissions increase 64% for automobiles, up to 1280% for rail, and 21% for air. Non-tailpipe VOCs are 36% of total automobile and 79% of total rail and air emissions. Infrastructure and parking construction are major components of total PM₁₀ emissions resulting in a large increase from vehicle operation for several modes. For rail and air systems, infrastructure construction and operation as well as vehicle manufacturing increase total CO emissions by 8 times from tailpipe performance.

This study evaluates the specific modal environmental performance of several U.S. metropolitan regions not from the top down (by comparing total inventory data and system-wide usage) but from the bottom up (by building life-cycle inventories specific to each region's transit). The environmental performance is evaluated from both the operational and life-cycle energy and emissions. With sparse evaluations of the total environmental inventory and associated costs, this work intends to provide some clarity on the quality and impact of specific modes and trip habits in the regions.

(A project completed with Elliot Martin)

As cellulosic ethanol technologies mature, California could use the organic content of municipal solid waste (MSW) as a transportation fuel feedstock and simultaneously reduce externalities associated with waste disposal. We examine the major processes required to support a lignocellulosic (employing enzymatic hydrolysis) MSW-to-ethanol infrastructure computing cost, energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) effects. The infrastructure is compared against the Business As Usual (BAU) case where the state continues to import most of its ethanol needs from the Midwest. By using only organic waste sent to landfills, California can produce between 1.0 and 1.5 billion gallons per year (BGY) of ethanol exceeding the current 900 million gallons per year (MGY) demand. The classification of organic wastes and biorefinery operation represent almost the entire system cost (between $1.5 to $4.2 billion annually) while distribution has negligible cost effects and savings from avoided landfilling is small. Fossil energy consumption from BAU decreases between 80 PJ and 130 PJ largely due to foregone gasoline consumption. The net GHG impacts are ultimately dependent on how well landfills control their emissions of decomposing organics. Based on the current landfill mix, the cellulosic infrastructure would experience net neutral GHG emissions. However, net emissions can rise (as large as 6.0 million metric tonnes CO₂e annually) if organics diversion releases carbon that would otherwise be flared and sequestered. Emissions would be avoided (as large as 17 million metric tonnes CO₂e annually) if landfills are not capable of effectively controlling emissions during periods of active waste decay. There is currently great uncertainty surrounding the actual effectiveness of landfill emissions controls. In either case, burying lignin appears to be better than burning lignin because of its decay properties. We estimate the breakeven price for lignocellulosic ethanol between $2.30 and $3.30/gal (average of $2.90/gal).

This study was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle's piece Better Biofuels Before More Biofuels in February 2008.

This study was mentioned on NPR's All Things Considered story Ethanol Worse for Climate Than Gasline in February 2008.

(A project completed with Elliot Martin)

Chester, Mikhail; Martin, Elliot; Sathaye, Nakul. Energy, Greenhouse Gas, and Cost Reductions for Municipal Recycling Systems. Environmental Science & Technology, 42 (6), 2142–2149, American Chemical Society.    

Curbside recycling programs can be more cost effective than landfilling and lead to environmental benefits from the recovery of materials. Significant reductions in energy and emissions are derived from the decrease of more energy intensive production with virgin materials. In many cities, competing priorities can lead to limited consideration given to system optimal collection and processing strategies that can drive down costs and increase revenue while simultaneously reducing system energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We evaluate three alterations to a hypothetical California city's recycling network to discern the conditions under which the changes constitute system improvements to cost, energy and emissions. The system initially operates with a collection zoning scheme that does not mitigate the impact of seasonal variations in consumer tonnage. In addition, two collection organizations operate redundantly collecting recyclables from different customer types on the same street network. Finally, the system is dual stream meaning recyclables are separated at the curbside. In some scenarios, this practice can limit the consumer participation rate leading to lower collection quantities. First, we evaluate a "business as usual" (BAU) scenario and find that the system operates at a $1.7M/yr loss but still avoids a net 18.7 GJ and 1,700 kg of greenhouse gas equivalent (GGE) per ton of material recycled. Second, we apply an alternative zoning scheme for collection that creates a uniform daily pickup demand throughout the year reducing costs by $0.2M/yr, energy by 30 MJ/ton and GHG emissions by 2 kg GGE/ton. Next, the two collection organizations are consolidated into a single entity further reducing vehicle fleet size and weekly vehicle miles traveled resulting in savings from BAU of $0.3M/yr, 100 MJ/ton and 8 kg GGE/ton. Lastly, we evaluate a switch to a single stream system (where recyclables are commingled). We show that single stream recycling can increase the total amount of material collected to a degree that lowers overall net cost ($0.2M/yr) and leads to further reductions in energy use (210 MJ/ton) and emissions (16 kg GGE/ton). However, there can be circumstances in which maintaining a consolidated dual stream system is preferred over single stream. A sensitivity analysis is also performed and a discussion is presented addressing the applicability of this city network to others.

(A project completed with Richard Plevin and Deepak Rajagopal)

We evaluate the potential of producing electricity and other energy forms from waste in Santa Barbara County, California. Several technologies are evaluated for waste-to-energy production. The technical and economic potential of conversion technology facilities is studied as well as their environmental impacts. Additionally, siting and transmission constraint issues are included.

Chester, Mikhail; Plevin, Richard; Rajagopal, Deepak. Biopower and Waste Conversion Technologies for Santa Barbara County, California. Report for the Community Environmental Consultants.

The US-Canadian electricity grid is a network of providers and users that operate almost completely independently of one another. In August 2003, First Energy’s (FE) Harding-Chamberlain transmission line near Akron, Ohio went offline starting a series of cascading failures that eventually led to eight U.S. states and one Canadian province, totaling nearly 50 million people, without power. The failure of transmission lines are common occurrences relating to the inability to exactly predict the electricity demand at any time. The inability to properly monitor and react across multiple organizations to the downed line was the true failure that led to the blackout. This outage not only left homes and businesses without power but paralyzed critical public services such as transportation networks and hospitals. The estimated cost of the outage is between 4 and 6 billion US dollars. The grid operates according to the physics of the flow of electrons: electricity is used the instance it is created, electricity travels through the path of least resistance, and electricity cannot be stored in large quantities effectively or economically. The complications of providing this form of energy are difficult enough, let alone coordinating the 3,500 organizations that are responsible for managing the network’s reliability. The North American Electric Reliability Council5 (NERC) is a group composed of public and private organizations that all have vested interests in the electricity grid. These members range from power plant owners to utility owners to independent power producers to citizens. NERC’s main function is to ensure the coordination of acceptable standards and practices for all of these parties to maintain the reliability of the network. This project analyses the human and organizational factors that contributed to the cascading failure in 2003 and what mechanisms can be put in place to prevent further failures.

This project has been continued as the doctoral dissertation work of Kofi Inkabi.

The consumption of energy is correlated to the release of emissions (although not one to one). Transportation emissions account for about 20% of CO₂ emissions in 2003 and 45% of nitrogen oxide (NO_X) releases. These numbers are important when considered in the context of exposure. If emissions take place and the substance does not have direct or indirect effects on human life then there is typically not a problem. This is usually not the case. Emissions from passenger vehicles typically have direct human health effects. If we couple this with the fact that 25% of the U.S. population lives within 500 meters of a paved roadway then we know that people are constantly exposed to transportation emissions.

This project examines the transportation characteristics of carbon monoxide (CO) in the San Francisco Bay Area. The transportation mechanisms will be described through a system of partial differential equations (PDEs) in the context of airborne transport models. The data used to study the Bay Area comes from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) Bay Area Transportation Survey (BATS) last conducted in 2000. Trip patterns are estimated using Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm.

(A project completed with Sarah Boyd and Teresa Zhang)

A mixed integer linear program is developed to optimize research investment for development of semiconductor manufacturing abatement technology such that these technologies meet future policy limits on greenhouse gas, water, and liquid and solid waste emissions. The technologies in consideration are used in abatement of perfluorocarbon (PFC) compounds and include combustion and water scrubbing, hot bed reaction, cold bed reaction and oxidation and water scrubbing. The policies constraining the investment are the Kyoto Protocol, UN water goals for 2025 and Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reporting.

An environmental and economic life-cycle assessment is performed to evaluate the benefits and costs of switching a vehicle fleet from gasoline to compressed natural gas. The Carnegie Mellon University's Facilities Management Services vehicle fleet (which includes maintenance and police vehicles) are evaluated for the fleet conversion. The construction of the refueling station and additional driving to access the refueling station are evaluated.

Akinci, Burcu; Chester, Mikhail; Hendrickson, Chris; Matthews, Scott; McCloskey, Kevin. Automated Photologging and Retrieval for a Digital Photograph Library. Procedures of the Transportation Research Board 83rd Annual Meeting 2004 (CD ROM).

Photographic records are commonly assembled for construction sites, accident reconstruction, facility inventories, personal memories and other uses. Typically, manual indexing and retrieval are used for these photo archives. We describe a prototype automated system for logging and retrieving digital photographs based on location and photograph direction. New pictures are automatically tagged with camera location, direction and time stamps, and then stored in a relational database. The digital photo database can be accessed from a variety of interfaces, including standard Computer-Aided Design and Geographic Information Systems. Photos of individual components or objects are identified and displayed on request based on a geometric search algorithm. The result is a digital photo library with automatic indexing and retrieval.

The Economic Input-Output Life-cycle Assessment tool developed at Carnegie Mellon University estimates the environmental and economic inventories of materials, products, processess, and services in the U.S. economy. The tool allows the user to input the amount of a good or service they wish to evaluate and computes the direct and indirect (i.e. supply chain) environmental and economic inventories associated with production. The first steps of joining land use data to the model were developed with the goal of inventorying land use requirements from the production of goods and services.

Chester, Mikhail; Hendrickson, Chris. Cost Impacts, Scheduling Impacts, and the Construction Claims Process. Journal of Construction Engineering & Management, ASCE, Volume 131, Issue 1, pages 102-107 January 2005.    

Construction mismanagement results in multiple problems that can cascade throughout the work force chain, affecting the schedule and leading to damages to multiple parties. Although the problem may start with a single subcontractor, it can result in all contractors feeling some impact to their work. In this paper, a case study is presented of a project with seven different mismanagement scenarios. A description of each scenario is provided as well as a quantification of the damages that result from the problem. A construction claims section is also included that addresses many of the issues that could result from a claim for each of the seven scenarios. A discussion is presented outlining possible preventative steps to minimize the damages from the problems presented.