A green routing problem: optimising CO₂ emissions and costs from a bi-fuel vehicle fleet
by Khodakaram Salimifard; Ramin Raeesi
International Journal of Advanced Operations Management (IJAOM), Vol. 6, No. 1, 2014

Abstract: Road transportation is a big contributor to the existing CO₂ emissions, among other greenhouse gases (GHGs) and air pollutants. The amount of emitted pollutants by a vehicle depends on the amount of fuel consumed and the type of fuel utilised. Moreover, the fuel consumption level is dependent on distance, load, speed, road gradient, driving pattern and many more factors. This paper extends vehicle routing problem (VRP) literature by developing a new variant as a green routing problem (GRP) which deals with optimising CO₂ emissions and costs from a bi-fuel vehicle fleet, which runs on both the main fuel and the cleaner alternative fuel. The modelling approach deals with not only the fuel consumption level, but also with the optimised utilisation of the alternative fuel of the vehicle. To analyse environmental and economic performance of the GRP, two extensions as P-GRP and CB-GRP were developed and implemented in an Iranian case study, with a bi-fuel (gasoline/CNG) fleet. Results of the case study and computational experiments suggest a possible reduction in CO₂ emissions by up to 27.38% and in costs by up to 18.76%, when compared with CVRP with a simple distance minimisation objective, using the conventional gasoline as the fuel.

Online publication date: Wed, 02-Jul-2014

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Advanced Operations Management (IJAOM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com