Title

Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Geothermal Heated Airport Pavement System

Campus Units

Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Institute for Transportation

Document Type

Article

Publication Version

Published Version

Publication Date

2015

Journal or Book Title

International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology

Volume

8

Issue

4

First Page

233

Last Page

242

DOI

10.6135/ijprt.org.tw/2015.8(4).233

Abstract

Geothermal heated pavement systems (GHPS), viz., the use of geothermal energy to heat pavements, have been used as an efficient alternative to de-icing chemicals and mechanical snow-removal equipment. Although some previous studies on pavement-heating systems have focused on their efficiency and economic viability, up to this point none of them have systematically investigated their potential to contribute toward global warming. This study applies life cycle assessment to analyze and compare greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the use of either GHPS or traditional snow-removal systems on airport runways and gate areas. A GHPS produces lower GHG emissions than a traditional snow-removal system in removing 2.5 cm of snow from an airport runway, and it is anticipated that the actual environmental benefits of using heated-pavement systems may become more evident at higher snowfall intensities or durations. The study also discovered that GHG emissions resulting from the use of GHPS at the airport gate area are about 100 times less in magnitude than those resulting from the use of either GHPS or traditional snow-removal strategies applied to airport runways. This indicates that the use of GHPS in selected airport areas such as airport gate areas (as opposed to runways) can result in much greater sustainability benefits, in terms of improved airport ground crew safety, cost-effectiveness, and reduced environmental impact.

Research Focus Area

Construction Engineering and Management, Transportation Engineering

Comments

This article is published as Shen, Weibin, Kasthurirangan Gopalakrishnan, Sunghwan Kim, and Halil Ceylan. "Assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from geothermal heated airport pavement system." International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology 8, no. 4 (2015): 233-242. doi: 10.6135/ijprt.org.tw/2015.8(4).233. Posted with permission.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Copyright Owner

Chinese Society of Pavement Engineering

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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