Life Cycle Air Emissions and Social Human Health Impact Assessment of Liquified Natural Gas Maritime Transport

Saleh Aseel, Hussein Al-Yafei, Murat Kucukvar and Nuri C. Onat
Additional contact information
Saleh Aseel: Engineering Management, College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar
Hussein Al-Yafei: Engineering Management, College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar
Murat Kucukvar: Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar
Nuri C. Onat: Qatar Transportation and Traffic Safety Center, College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 19, 1-19

Abstract: Air pollution, which causes over seven million deaths per year, is the most significant and specifically related to health impacts. Nearly 90% of the urban population worldwide is exposed to pollution not meeting the World Health Organization guidelines for air quality. Many atmospheric carbon oxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter emitting sources, such as inefficient energy and polluting transportation, directly impact health. Natural gas maritime transport from various parts of the world (carbon supplied to consuming areas) has become more critical. Natural gas liquefaction offers a cleaner and more efficient transportation option and also increases its storage capacity. It is expected that natural gas will reduce the human health impact compared with other traditional fuels consumed. This research establishes a life cycle assessment model of air emission and social human health impact related to LNG maritime transport to investigate the impact of each type of fuel used for the numerous maritime carriers. In order to build a model for air emissions and social human health impact assessments based on hypotheses on various unknown criteria, a calculation model is used. The results revealed Conventional-2 fuel type has the lowest human health impact for annual mode calculations, followed by Conventional-1, Q-Max, and finally Q-Flex. The analysis method for the per year demonstrated discrepancies in the relative human health impact due to the variation of the annual LNG demand by each destination and not only per the trip needs. The results show the importance of using a relatively cleaner fuel type such as Conventional-2 in reducing the health impact of LNG maritime transportation. Moreover, it shows differences in the air emissions as well as the human health impact based on the destination’s location and annual LNG demand.

Keywords: air emissions; liquified natural gas; maritime transport; social human health; life cycle assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/19/6208/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/19/6208/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:19:p:6208-:d:645860

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().