A financial and environmental evaluation for the introduction of diesel-hydraulic hybrid-drive system in urban waste collection

Abstract This paper discusses the efficiency and feasibility of diesel-hydraulic hybrid-drive technology applied to urban waste collection trucks, regarding a financial and environmental focus. The analysis is based on uniform monthly costs cash flow of the diesel-hydraulic hybrid-drive system implementation, considering its elements, such as equipment and maintenance cost, and also taking under consideration the range of efficiency identified on the literature review and endorsed data collect in a field test. It was found that for the efficiencies of 15% and 25%, the implementation of the suggested technology are favorable for waste collection trucks with 2 and 3 axes, from 6 to 19 m 3 capacity, which are found in the Municipal Urban Cleaning Company (COMLURB) fleet of 223 vehicles. Better figures leads to 120,190 l of diesel saved each month what means US$ 123,796.29 and 330.66 t of CO 2 . If high carbon benefit price of U$ 5500/t is introduced the improvement in monetary economy reaches 14.26% (US$ 17,656.60). These benefits are better distributed by vehicle type than by fleet size and 80.56% of then are related to the fleet of 15–19 m 3 capacity waste collection as far as they represent 79.37% of the entire fleet.