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When attempting to reduce atmospheric emissions, a strategy commonly suggested by experts is the replacement of road transport with rail transport. However, in many countries and for many companies worldwide a complete transition to rail transport of freight is not feasible due to either a lack of available railway infrastructure or high investment costs. With that in mind, this paper aims to assess the potential of road-rail intermodal operations as a strategy to reduce atmospheric emissions, and thereby help mitigate climate change worldwide. This was achieved by quantifying and comparing emissions of CO2, CO, CH4, NOx, hydrocarbons and particulate matter in a case-study that considered road-only and intermodal road-rail routes from 17 production facilities to their nearest port, according to International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) policies, as well as Euro V and EPA (United State Environmental Protection Agency) emission standards. The results showed that an intermodal road-rail operations would reduce emissions by up to 77.4%, be up to 43.48% more fuel-efficient and up to 80% cheaper than operating solely with road transport, posing as a viable strategy to enable more companies and countries to mitigate climate change.

On the way to a more sustainable society, transport needs to be urgently optimized regarding energy consumption and pollution control. While in earlier decades, Europe followed automobile technology leaps initiated in the USA, it has decoupled itself for 20 years by focusing research capacity towards the diesel powertrain. The resulting technology shift has led to some 45 million extra diesel cars in Europe. Its outcome in terms of health and environmental effects will be investigated below.Expected greenhouse gas savings initiated by the shift to diesel cars have been overestimated. Only about one tenth of overall energy efficiency improvements of passenger cars can be attributed to it. These minor savings are on the other hand overcompensated by a significant increase of supply chain CO2emissions and extensive black carbon emissions of diesel cars without particulate filter. We conclude that the European diesel car boom did not cool down the atmosphere. Moreover, toxic NOxemissions of diesel cars have been underestimated up to 20-fold in officially announced data. The voluntary agreement signed in 1998 between the European Automobile industry and the European Commission envisaging to reduce CO2emissions has been identified as elementary for the ensuing European diesel car boom. Four factors have been quantified in order to explain very different dieselization rates across Europe: impact of national car/supplier industry, ecological modernization, fuel tourism and corporatist political governance. By comparing the European diesel strategy to the Japanese petrol-hybrid avenue, it becomes clear that a different road would have both more effectively reduced CO2emissions and pollutants.Europe's car fleets have been persistently transformed from being petrol-driven to diesel-driven over the last 20 years. This paper investigates on how this came to be and why Europe took a distinct route as compared to other parts of the world. It also attempts to evaluate the outcome of stated goals of this transformation which was primarily a robust reduction in GHG emissions. We conclude that global warming has been negatively affected, and air pollution has become alarming in many European locations. More progressive development scenarios could have prevented these outcomes.

Abstract: Background: Electric vehicles have been identified as being a key technology in reducing future emissions and energy consumption in the mobility sector. The focus of this article is to review and assess the energy efficiency and the environmental impact of battery electric cars (BEV), which is the only technical alternative on the market available today to vehicles with internal combustion engine (ICEV). Electricity onboard a car can be provided either by a battery or a fuel cell (FCV). The technical structure of BEV is described, clarifying that it is relatively simple compared to ICEV. Following that, ICEV can be ‘e-converted’ by experienced personnel. Such an e-conversion project generated reality-close data reported here. Results: Practicability of today's BEV is discussed, revealing that particularly small-size BEVs are useful. This article reports on an e-conversion of a used Smart. Measurements on this car, prior and after conversion, confirmed a fourfold energy efficiency advantage of BEV over ICEV, as supposed in literature. Preliminary energy efficiency data of FCV are reviewed being only slightly lower compared to BEV. However, well-to-wheel efficiency suffers from 47% to 63% energy loss during hydrogen production. With respect to energy efficiency, BEVs are found to represent the only alternative to ICEV. This, however, is only true if the electricity is provided by very efficient power plants or better by renewable energy production. Literature data on energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission by ICEV compared to BEV suffer from a 25% underestimation of ICEV-standardized driving cycle numbers in relation to street conditions so far. Literature data available for BEV, on the other hand, were mostly modeled and based on relatively heavy BEV as well as driving conditions, which do not represent the most useful field of BEV operation. Literature data have been compared with measurements based on the converted Smart, revealing a distinct GHG emissions advantage due to the German electricity net conditions, which can be considerably extended by charging electricity from renewable sources. Life cycle carbon footprint of BEV is reviewed based on literature data with emphasis on lithium-ion batteries. Battery life cycle assessment (LCA) data available in literature, so far, vary significantly by a factor of up to 5.6 depending on LCA methodology approach, but also with respect to the battery chemistry. Carbon footprint over 100,000 km calculated for the converted 10-year-old Smart exhibits a possible reduction of over 80% in comparison to the Smart with internal combustion engine. Conclusion: Findings of the article confirm that the electric car can serve as a suitable instrument towards a much more sustainable future in mobility. This is particularly true for small-size BEV, which is underrepresented in LCA literature data so far. While CO2-LCA of BEV seems to be relatively well known apart from the battery, life cycle impact of BEV in categories other than the global warming potential reveals a complex and still incomplete picture. Since technology of the electric car is of limited complexity with the exception of the battery, used cars can also be converted from combustion to electric. This way, it seems possible to reduce CO2-equivalent emissions by 80% (factor 5 efficiency improvement).

Employing the data available to date, anthropogenic Pt fluxes are calculated for Germany with special emphasis on the Pt emitted by cars equipped with catalytic converters. Pt fluxes are quantified using five different methods (street deposition, automobile emission rate, sewage sludges, atmospheric load, industrial consumption). During the first and the second methods, approx. 100 kg of emitted Pt are seen to result for both for the mid 1990’s. Up to the year 2018, a total of 2100 kg of Pt will be emitted by cars equipped with catalytic converters. The diffuse atmospheric Pt deposition amounts to 0.73 – 4.4 μg/m2y or 260 kg Pt/year. Industrial sources emitting Pt into the atmosphere are likely but difficult to quantify. The enrichment of Pt in soils during agriculture fertilization with sewage sludges and during diffuse atmospheric deposition result in a level of 46 – 460 ng/kg up to the year 2018. Although this is slightly below the geogenic background, a comparison with the pollution history of Pb implies that forthcoming environmental Pt enrichment should not be neglected.

The present report deals with differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry (DPASV) applied for the analysis of cadmium in open ocean seawater. Evaluation of different Cd species can generate information about distribution and speciation of Cd in the open ocean. Distribution of Cd was investigated in surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean over a wide geographical range as well as in the water column. Surface water sampling on board the research vessel Polarstern was performed from the bow boom of the ship as well as with a snorkel system which allowed continuous sample-taking. Two different Cd species could be differentiated in the voltammograms. UV-irradiation experiments allowed the identification of an inorganic and organic Cd form, the latter caused by the association between Cd and organic matter as e.g. humic substances (HS). Atlantic ocean surface seawater normally contains between 2 and 4 ng organically complexed Cd/kg and no detectable inorganic Cd. Some areas however showed readings of up to 14 ng inorganic Cd/kg in addition. Water column samples exhibited an enrichment of inorganic Cd by depth. Occurrence of inorganic Cd at the surface could be related to specific oceanographical conditions. Together with analytical results of trace metal contents in the particulate phases of surface seawater, new aspects could be established about the biogeochemical cycling of Cd in the sea.

Trace concentrations of the platinum group elements (PGE; here: Pt, Pd and Rh) play an important role in environmental analysis and assessment. Their importance is based on 1. their increasing use as active compartments in automobile exhaust catalysts, 2. their use as cancer anti-tumor agents in medicine. Due to their allergenic and cytotoxic potential, it is necessary to improve selectivity and sensitivity during analytical investigation of matrices like soil, grass, urine or blood.

Inconsistent data presently available on the platinum emission rate of cars in Germany equipped with catalytic converters are evaluated. Automobile sources of Pt other than autocatalysts are quantified and found to be 1–6 orders of magnitudes lower than the Pt emissions attributed to catalytic converters. A transfer of emission rates derived from test stand experiments to more realistic street conditions reaches 0.8 μg Pt/km. In this manner, data from test stand experiments and from environmental investigations meet in the range of 0.5–0.8 μg Pt/km.

On three north-south transects across the Atlantic Ocean continuous profiles of Cd, Cu, and Al were measured in surface waters with ultra clean sampling and analytical procedures. Salinity, nutrients, and Al served as tracers to identify the characteristic oceanographic regimes sampled under the different circumstances encountered during three different seasons. The behaviour of the biodepleted element Cd and of the biointermediate element Cu was then investigated in relation to hydrography and nutrient cycling. Trace metals and nutrients are generally uncoupled in surface waters. A Cd/PO4 relationship only exists at high concentration levels, which were reached in winter under continental influence and in the immediate proximity to intense upwelling. The preferential removal of Cd over phosphate downstream of upwelling regions was confirmed. The reverse situation was observed in the northeastern Atlantic, where Cd depletion occurred after that for phosphate. The difference is tentatively attributed to continental sources of Zn for which Cd substitutes. The continent and the shelves are the major source for Cu. Except in proximity to these sources, the latitudinal Cu distribution is very smooth with open- ocean values around 0.65 to 1 nmol/kg as a result of slow scavenging, probably related to organic complexation. The tropical Atlantic Ocean shows very distinct signatures of dissolved Al and silicate in low-salinity waters. These signatures can be used to trace the origin of freshwater to atmospheric or river/shelf inputs, which have very different AI/Si ratios. The Amazon River was identified as the probable source of a low-salinity zone sampled in October 1990 at 5–9°N, 28°W, with elevated nutrients, particulate organic C, Cu, and Cd values.

A new type of automobile catalyst based on an active Pd/Rh-layer is presently being introduced into the European market. Accordingly, in order to establish baseline information, this work attempts to assess the magnitude of Pd emissions by automobile catalysts to date. Thus, a survey is presented on Pd and Pt levels detected in polluted environmental matrices (grass, soil, dust, sludges) as available from the literature. Additionally, Pd data measured by selective preconcentration/GF-AAS-detection in polluted grass, in a time series of sewage sludge ashes back to 1972, in dust, as well as in urban rain are presented. Since the data basis from the literature is partly inconsistent, the possible impact of different analytical attempts on the data is discussed. The relationship between Pt and Pd concentration from most of the results is between 5 and 10 (Pt/Pd). However, relations down to 0.04 are also reported, thus implying anthropogenic Pd input from additional sources.