EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO REDUCE FUEL CONSUMPTION AND GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS OF HEAVY DUTY VEHICLES IN MEXICO

It is necessary to reduce the fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the Mexican transportation sector. Especially of heavy-duty vehicles which are those with a weight greater than 3.857 tons [1]. In the United States of America (USA), although the heavy-duty vehicles fleet is only 10% of the whole transportation fleet, they emit the 20% of the CO2 emissions of the entire transportation sector. One of the most effective ways in the world to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions is through federal regulations. Japan, USA, Canada and a few other countries have already implemented energy efficiency and/or CO2 emissions reduction regulations for heavy duty vehicles. The regulations push the manufacturers of new heavy-duty vehicles to generate technologies which reduce the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Developed countries have scientists and technologists to develop the necessary technologies. The heavy-duty vehicles certification to the energy efficiency and CO2 emissions is carried out through the numerical simulation of the operation of the heavy duty vehicles using very specific software applications such as the VECTO [2] and the GEM [3]. Mexico should modify these software applications or develop others in order that they be appropriate to simulate the particularities of its fleets, roads and driving patterns. In this paper an effort to form the necessary professionals in energy efficiency analysis, to develop an appropriate software for the certification and to identify the necessary laboratories for the certification is reported. The methodology in this effort has been that of a group of professors and students of the Mexican Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) and of the National Autonomous University of Mexico has worked with the Mexican Government and interacted with leaders of the industry and users of the heavy duty vehicles to learn about how an appropriate regulation could be created and to learn about the capabilities that the software should have. As a result the UAMmero software [4] has been created and an educational model has been proposed in order to form professionals in the analysis of energy efficiency of the Mexican heavy duty transportation sector. The educational model could be replicated at UAM in other areas to create professionals who are needed because a large percentage of our graduates are either unemployed or get jobs in which they do not apply what they learn in all the many years of their engineering careers. The results will be presented in the conference.

References:
[1] J. Garcia-Osorio, A. Maldonado-Susano, N. Dominguez-Vergara, Methods and results of training economically technical driving in Mexico, EDULEARN 2019 Proceedings, pp. 7439-7448, 2019.
[2] European Commission, Vehicle Energy Consumption calculation TOol – VECTO, Accessed November 20, 2019. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/vecto_en
[3] USA, EPA, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Model (GEM) for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicle Compliance, Accessed November 20, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/greenhouse-gas-emissions-model-gem-medium-and-heavy-duty
[4] N. Domínguez Vergara, J. L. Pantoja Gallegos, Daniel N. Domínguez Pérez, UAMmero, software para estimar el consumo de combustible y las emisiones de bióxido de carbono de vehículos pesados, COMCAPLA 2018 Proceedings, pp. 600-606, 2019.