The Technology Context – B101

The Impact of Buses on Society

History of the bus

Image source: http://www.oldwoodies.com/img/bus/75autobus_amedee-bollee.jpg

Ever since 1826 buses have been used worldwide as a way of commuting from place to place. Their aim is to provide quick, affordable and regular transport. Buses are used to transport people around cities and towns, around and across countries.

Ever since buses were first used, they have been constantly changed to improve their performance. In the very early days, buses were a large horse-drawn carriage that Stanislas Baudry owned, and the sole purpose of it was to commute people from in the local town, to his public baths. But he then found out that people wanted to get off along route at other places, so he started up the first bus company, Omnѐs Omnibus.

Once the first bus company was invented, the idea spread quickly throughout the world. As people, who’s only ever way of travelling before was by foot, could now commute from place to place quicker and easier.

The buses have progressed as time has gone on, they have progressed to provide faster, safer, more comfortable and, more recently, they have been making their service greener. When the buses first started they were canvas horse drawn carriages, they slowly have become more advanced. After the initial horse drawn carriages and the buses then progressed to a steam powered engine, using up to 50 kilos of coal per hour. After the steam engine the next major step was a gasoline based engine and from there as we know it today with higher refined diesel. There have also been improvements with the structure of the buses, going from the original canvas based cover, which then progressed to a wooden cover and then also having all windows covered by glass. After the industrial revolution, when metal became cheaper, the buses then started being covered by metal covers which made them safer and less likely to be affected by weathering.

Project Overview

Over the last few months I have been looking at the buses in Portsmouth and around England, looking at how they have impacted society with their technology improvements. Especially over the last few years I there have been a lot of breakthroughs in the technologies that the buses use. They use many ways to be a greener commuting transportation vehicle.

I will be looking at how the recent changes and the possible future changes would affect how the buses operate in society and also how they could improve with the technologies now made possible.

Currently the buses are trying out many new technologies: - reducing harmful gas emissions, to use more sustainable fuel sources including renewable sources this will increase reputation as a good way to travel and creates a better value service.

The Sustainable Technology Issue

In order for people to use buses they have to believe that the use of a bus will benefit them. In order to benefit people, the bus service has to run a regular service that is affordable to users and also provides them with a service that is reliable.

Because the buses want to fulfil all of these criteria, they have to run lots of buses, to provide people with the regular service they want. As so many buses are needed, the amount of emissions produced is very high; however the Government doesn't want the buses polluting the atmosphere. Therefore, they have set targets for the local councils to meet.

Possible Technical Alternatives

As the government keeps pushing to reduce the emissions and provide a greener service, there have been many technological advances and some of the ideas have many beneficial gains. Some of the recent technologies include:-

Cooking oil for fuel -

some bus companies have starting using used cooking oil to fuel their buses, they have been collecting the used cooking oil and then cleaning it and then it is ready to use. The only thing they have to do with the oil is heat it to 160 ̊F and then they can use it as a normal fuel. For the first 10 minutes of the day, the buses need to run on normal diesel fuel, to heat the cooking oil up to temperature and then be able to use it.

Images source: http://www.hunts-coaches.co.uk/images/layout/DSCN0428.JPG

One of the main places that is using this technology is Kilmarnock, The have been collecting the used cooking oil from restraunts across the area. The restraunts used to pay for the used cooking oil to be collected, and now they Stagecoach company collect the oil free of charge from them. The company has also come up with a collection service where the public are given special oil containers, with this container, the public can trade in their cooking oil for reduced bus tickets.

Use of Hybrid Engines -

Hybrid engines is a way of using a large battery to power the buses, these are then charged from energy stations that can use greener power plants to charge the cells. The bus also uses a small 1.9Ltr engine, one that would normaly power a large family car. The buses use advanced motors so that they are very economical and waste very little energy. The motors also act as the breaks so when the buses need to break the motors are used as a generator to convert the momentum of the bus to electrical energy to recharge the battery.
The use of the hybrid buses can reduce the bus emissions by 30% as the buses use advanced technologies to make sure that minimal energy is lost, thus making the bus more economical. These buses use normal diesel fuel to keep the engines going.


Images source: http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/londonbus2.jpg

Reusing Air and cooling it -

This is a way of reducing the toxic emissions produced by the current buses. This is a cheap way to reduce the emissions produced by the buses currently in service, it takes the air used by the buses engine, the filters it, cools it and then reuses the air. The technology that the buses are using here, reduce the NOx (Nitrogen Oxide) emissions of the buses, the NOx gases are a combination of gases that are very harmful to the environment. This process is a quick way that the Mayor of London, like many others, is using to reduce the emissions of the current buses. This option is just a short term fix for the current buses, in the long term they will have to progress to one of the other long term solutions.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell -

Recently some buses in London have taken on using a new fuel source, Hydrogen. Hydrogen gas is highly combustible, because of this is makes a perfect fuel. After the combustion of the gas the only product left is water, meaning there is no emissions whatsoever, thus a perfect fuel for the future.
Hydrogen is highly combustible as seen in the Hindenburg incident seen on the 3rd of May 1937. Even though this incident happened over 70 years ago, people still think about this when we talk about using hydrogen as a fuel for the public.

Because of hydrogen’s volatile state, the hydrogen fuel cells have to be fuelled in special hydrogen filling sites, these sites are very expensive and planning permission for these sites is very hard to get as people don’t want to have the dangerous site beside their houses.

Financial Costs and Political Effects

Images source: http://www.tbus.org.uk/co2.gif

I will now look at the financial costs of each of the technologies that now exists, and will look at how the politics comes into play with the efficiency of spending.

With the use of cooking oil, there is only a slight cost of £1,750 this is an affordable way to cut emissions by up to 12%. Even with just this in mind, it is good value. Another worthwhile point about this, is that most of the fuel is free (apart from the initial diesel used, and also the cost of cleaning the oil). Because the fuel is so cheap and also offering a discount on the bus tickets, people are more likely to use the bus service, thus also reducing emissions, on when they would have used their cars. Politically this is one of the best ways for the buses to be a sustainable public service for the meantime, but it still produces some harmful emissions.

With the use of Hybrid buses, the buses costing £285,000, this is just 33% more than a regular diesel bus, and emits 40% less emissions. Costing £95,000 more than a regular bus, it provides a much better service and is more economical to run increasing fuel economy by 32% so it would soon pay back the £95,000 of the initial payment. With politics in mind this is a big step in reducing emissions, even so it will take time to be able to afford all of the buses to be replaced with this technology.

With the use of the conversion kit, it is very hard to find the cost of this conversion, so I unfortunately can’t comment on this. But this is only ever meant to have been a quick fix for the solution, so it is unfortunately a cost that is needed to be paid as the government is putting presser on councils especially in London to reduce emissions.

Hydrogen Cell technology is a way of reducing emissions, as you can see from the graph, emissions are reduced by roughly 23%. As these hydrogen cells are quite a new technology, they aren’t very efficient, and they unfortunately waste a lot of energy in creating the hydrogen. “It takes about 4 kWh of electricity to create, compress and transport 1 kWh worth of hydrogen. The engineering goal is to achieve 50% efficiency for the fuel cell unit itself; the electric motors on the bus are about 90% efficient” Trolleybus UK(2006, February 1). Eletric TbusGroup
Retrieved January 12, 2008,
From http://www.tbus.org.uk/fuelcell.htm

As for the cost of these buses, each bus costs £750,000 and the cost of the station is a lot more and getting planning for the stations can take a long time with lots of objections from the public, this is a very expensive inefficient way of transport.

Conclusion

I believe that the future with public transport (especially buses) should be with hydrogen fuel cells. I believe that in the future, the process of producing hydrogen will be more efficient, producing a higher yield of hydrogen for the electricity that is being used. The motors on the buses will also increase in efficiency from the 90% it is currently. I believe that the energy used to make the hydrogen should be energy from a greener source such as tidal power or wind power, thus making the buses fuel source 100% environmentally friendly.

Bibliography

Bus - Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus
Woodie Gallery: Woodie Buses - Old Woodies: http://www.oldwoodies.com/gallery-bus.htm
Druitt, T. (n.d.). The Big Lemon: http://www.thebiglemon.com
Stagecoach Group: Stagecoach launches UK's first Bio-Buses: http://www.stagecoachgroup.com/scg/media/press/pr2007/2007-10-26/
BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Chip fat buses take to the road: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7063384.stm
Vegetable Oil Fuel Powered Buses: http://busforsaleguide.com/vegetable_oil_fuel.htm
Hybrid buses | Transport for London: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/environment/2019.aspx
Trolleybus UK: http://www.tbus.org.uk/fuelcell.htm