About

Laszlo Horvath is the Department Head of the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials and the Director of the Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design at Virginia Tech. He moved to the U.S. from Hungary in the early 2000s and currently resides in Blacksburg, VA with his wife and three young children. Laszlo is one of the few packaging professionals who received the ISTA CPLP – Professional Level certification. His research has focused on unit load interactions between the components of unit loads with the overall goal of reducing the cost of the packaging supply chain. The information generated as part of this research area is being built into The Pallet Design System, a commercial pallet design software. He also has an interest in conducting market studies and researching packaging sustainability, including the development of life cycle inventories and life cycle analysis for pallet production and repair. Recently, his research teams have been exploring smart and connected packaging, evaluating its feasibility and applicability for distribution packaging and warehousing.

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Ecology
• Engineering
• Materials science
• Zoology
• Pulp and paper industry
• Fishery
• Atmospheric sciences
• Composite material
• Forestry
• Business
• Marketing
• Geography
• Environmental science
• Biology

Selected publications

• Investigation of the status of the wooden pallet market during the COVD-19 pandemic,

  BioResources · 2025-03-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  It is estimated that there are 3.1 billion pallets in circulation in the United States, and the majority of these pallets are made of wood. This research was conducted to obtain important information about the market and raw material usage trends in the wooden pallet and container industry from 2019 through 2021. The results revealed that the wooden pallet and container industry produced an estimated 919 million new pallets in 2021, which is an estimated 75% increase over 2016. The 48” x 40” pallet size continued to be the dominant new pallet size with a 29% market share. The share of softwood lumber used in the industry has steadily increased since 2016, and it accounted for 81% of the lumber used in pallet production in 2021. The industry used 38% of the total sawn softwood and hardwood lumber produced in the U.S. The industry also produced 280 million repaired and remanufactured pallets; this is a 16.4% decrease compared to 2016. Approximately 22% of respondents stated that they were not affected by the pandemic. A majority of respondents (51%) stated that they exceeded their 2019 sales, and only 12% saw no change in sales in 2020 compared to 2019.

  PublisherDOI

• Measurement and Analysis of Last-Mile Parcel Delivery Truck Vibration Levels in Korea

  Applied Sciences · 2024-04-12 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  South Korea has one of the largest e-commerce markets in the world. The last-mile delivery segment of e-commerce often causes critical damage to products in protective packages. Despite the rapid growth of the e-commerce market in Korea, the last-mile distribution environment has not yet been thoroughly investigated. The main aim of this study was to provide an understanding of the vibration levels that were measured from various parcel delivery routes within Seoul, Korea, using common types of parcel delivery trucks. Vibration levels of ten delivery trucks were measured and analyzed in terms of power spectral densities (PSDs) and presented as PSD spectra. The last-mile delivery vehicle vibration levels in Korea were found to be consistently lower (in the 1 to 200 Hz frequency range) than those recommended by international standards and lower than the vibration levels of parcel delivery vehicles in the U.S. and Hungary. The results also revealed that the highest intensity peak of the PSD spectrum for Korea was located in the lower frequency range (1.5 to 2 Hz) compared to the ISTA 3A pickup and delivery test profile (3 to 4 Hz) and the test profile recommended for Hungary (13 to 16 Hz). A smoothed composite spectrum was also provided to support Korean packaging engineers in optimizing their packages by simulating proper last-mile truck delivery vibration levels in lab conditions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Measurement and Analysis of the Shock and Drop Levels Experienced by Small and Medium Packages in the Korean Parcel Delivery System

  Applied Sciences · 2024-05-08 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  South Korea is one of the leading markets for the e-commerce industry. In line with the rapid growth of the e-commerce industry, the parcel delivery volume in Korea has also proliferated. Despite the developments in the Korean e-commerce and courier industries, consumers still experience a high package damage rate. In response, many packaging engineers in Korea have raised the need for new parcel shipping environment tests that reflect the Korean ground shipping environment in order to properly optimize packages. However, only limited information on the Korean parcel shipping environment is currently available. Therefore, this study focused on measuring and analyzing the shock and drop levels that parcels experience during ground shipping in Korea. Shock data were collected from a total of sixty one-way shipments for small, lightweight packages and medium, mid-weight packages. The findings revealed that the two types of boxes do not experience significantly different numbers of shock events or drop heights in the Korean parcel delivery environment. Furthermore, the number of shock events that occur in Korea is substantially less than the international testing standard and less than in previous studies conducted in both Europe and the USA. In contrast, however, the drop heights are higher than those in the international testing standard and previous studies. Shock events were found to occur most frequently on the edges and to be concentrated around the bottoms of the packages. Most shock events happen while packages are loaded and unloaded at hub terminals and sub terminals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Photoacoustic spectroscopy based nitrous oxide measurement for field applications

  2024-03-11

  preprintOpen access

  The efficiency of fertilisers used worldwide is around 50%. It is a global environmental and economic problem, and intensive research is being conducted to find a solution. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is one of the nitrogen compounds released from fertilised soils. N2O is also emitted during the storage, treatment, and application of animal manure, in addition to fertilisers.To reduce emissions, gas concentration and emission monitoring is important for accurate estimation of agricultural losses and to establish regulations for mitigation purposes. Laser spectroscopy-based methods provide in-situ, highly selective measurements with minimal maintenance, therefore they are promising techniques for monitoring N2O. A photoacoustic system based on a quantum cascade laser emitting around 7.72 μm was developed for N2O concentration measurement. Selectivity of the system was tested for water vapour (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). No cross sensitivity was found for H2O and CO2, nevertheless for CH4 it is not negligible, therefore a two-wavelength method is applied to correct for CH4. The system has a minimum detectable concentration of 8.5 ppb with an averaging time of 10 seconds. The system was calibrated from 0.05 ppm to 10 ppm, the response was found to be highly linear over the calibrated range (R2 = 0.9989).A feasibility study was performed in a naturally ventilated free-stall dairy barn. Measurements were taken at a total of six measurement points, two of which were outside the barn and four inside the barn where spatial and temporal variations of N2O concentration were measured. Measurements taken outside the barn were considered to be close to the background (333 ppb). There, the measured concentration was 388 ppb ± 11 ppb. The measured mean N2O concentration inside the barn was 499 ppb ± 191 ppb during a three-hour period, and it varied between the near background concentration and 1 ppm. The system has a signal stability allowing for field applications; however, further tests are required to prove its applicability for quantifying biosphere-atmosphere exchanges of N2O. In the future our measuring system will be applicable to monitor N2O emission flux above crop fields and at livestock farms as well.

  PublisherDOI

• Power Variability of Wind and Solar Production Portfolio in the Republic of Croatia

  Journal of Energy - Energija · 2023-04-06 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this work, we analysed multi-annual data set of wind and solar production portfolio with different power frequency approaches and averaging methods in order to characterize power production variability at different temporal scales. All of the methods have their advantages depending on their scale and purpose, but also some shortcomings that limit their use. For the purposes of this work, we selected the method of explicit derivation as the most appropriate for the fast power change frequency analysis and characterization. 
 The variability of power production from wind and solar power plants in Croatia is strongly present on an hourly, daily and seasonal level, while on an annual level the variability is much less pronounced. Since current electricity production and consumption must remain in balance to maintain the stability of the power network, this variability of production can pose significant challenges for the inclusion of large amounts of wind and solar energy in the power system of the Republic of Croatia.
 A particular challenge for the power system in terms of production variability is the fast change in power. Fast power change affects the quality of production forecasting and consequently causes higher imbalance costs. The impact on the management and balancing of the power system is particularly challenging.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sustainable and Secure Transport: Achieving Environmental Impact Reductions by Optimizing Pallet-Package Strength Interactions during Transport

  Sustainability · 2023-08-22 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Increasing quantities of products are being transported across widely distributed supply networks; the sustainability of the packaging used to transport these goods, or unit loads, presents an area of potential concern. The most common type of unit load in the U.S. is wooden pallets supporting various configurations of stacked corrugated boxes. Research into unit load cost optimization revealed that increasing the stiffness of a pallet’s top deck can significantly affect the strength of the assembled, stacked corrugated boxes and provides opportunities to reduce the board grade required for accompanying corrugated boxes. However, there remains a knowledge gap regarding the environmental implications of this type of unit load optimization method. To address this, we conducted a life cycle analysis (LCA) to investigate the environmental implications of optimizing a unit load using this method. The environmental impacts of paired (pallet and box) unit load design scenarios (n = 108) were investigated using varied wood species, pallet top deck thicknesses, corrugated boxes sizes, corrugated flutes, and board grades. Initial and optimized unit load scenarios ensured that the unit loads offered equivalent performance. LCA results indicate that optimizing the unit load can reduce environmental impacts by up to 23%, with benefits accruing across most impact categories primarily due to the reduction in corrugated material used. Ozone depletion, the exception, was mainly affected by the increase in the amount of required pallet materials. This study provides minimum required conditions as preliminary guidance for determining the usefulness of unit load specific analysis, and a sensitivity analysis confirmed these values remain unchanged even with different transportation distances. Through the unit load optimization method, this study demonstrates that an effective way to reduce the overall environmental impact and cost of transported unit loads involves increasing the stiffness of the top decks and reducing the corrugated board grade.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Possible environmental applications of a recently developed ammonia isotope monitoring photoacoustic system

  Időjárás · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Ammonia is one of the most significant environmental pollutants. Concentration measurements, identifying the sources and studying the transformations in the biosphere are essential, and they are the focus of many investigations. The near-infrared (≈1530 nm) photoacoustic method for simultaneous and selective determination of 14NH3/15NH3 isotopologues reported here can be suitable for monitoring these phenomena and processes. So far, the photoacoustic method has not been used for this kind of examination. The application of our measurement method makes it possible to eliminate the disadvantages of the previous measurement methods. The detection limit of the PA system is 0.14 ppm and 0.73 ppm for 14NH3 and 15NH3, respectively, which can be improved by orders of magnitude with further development of sampling and measurement techniques.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Application of open photoacoustic cell in an eddy covariance system for water vapor flux measurement

  2023-02-26

  preprintOpen access

  Water vapor flux plays a crucial role in surface-atmosphere exchange processes as evapotranspiration regulates the energy balance of the surface. Moreover, it transfers water vapor into the atmosphere and, as a result, shapes the hydrological cycle. The eddy-covariance (EC) technique is the most commonly applied method to directly measure water vapor flux over a wide variety of surfaces. An EC arrangement consists of a 3D sonic anemometer and a gas analyzer. To derive surface fluxes, wind components and the gas concentration (e.g. water vapor) have to be recorded with high-frequency (at least at 10 Hz). In the case of open-path (sampling-free) EC systems, infrared (IR) gas analyzers are used dominantly, which are still quite large so that e.g. they cannot be easily mounted on drones. In contrast, small and light sonic anemometers are available for flux measurements.In this study, we present the application of a sampling-free photoacoustic (PA) sensor for water vapor flux measurement employing the EC technique. The fast response PA sensor records the water vapor concentration through an open cylindrical chamber having an overall size of less than 1 dm3. On the one hand, a previous first test showed that the vertical covariance functions obtained by the PA cell follow closely to those resulting from an accepted IR sensor. On the other hand, the PA system showed some underestimation at higher frequencies based on the analysis of co-spectra.  To comprehensively test and evaluate the PA cell for flux measurements, a seven-week-long field measurement was performed over a plain grassland when a calibrated EC150 IR sensor (Campbell Sci.) was used as a reference gas analyzer. We analyze the accuracy of the PA system: (i) depending on the orientation of the cell or i.e. the wind direction, and (ii) for a broad range of meteorological conditions, such as different wind speeds and atmospheric stability. Furthermore, to overcome the high-frequency attenuation, we establish and apply empirical spectral transfer functions following the literature and standard EC postprocessing procedures. The characteristic response time of the PA sensor is also assessed.

  PublisherDOI

• A single-point modeling approach for the intercomparison and evaluation of ozone dry deposition across chemical transport models (Activity 2 of AQMEII4)

  2023-03-22 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract. A primary sink of air pollutants and their precursors is dry deposition. Dry deposition estimates differ across chemical transport models yet an understanding of the model spread is incomplete. Here we introduce Activity 2 of the Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative Phase 4 (AQMEII4). We examine dry deposition schemes from regional and global chemical transport models as well as standalone models used for impacts assessments or process understanding. We configure eighteen schemes as single-point models at eight northern hemisphere locations with observed ozone fluxes. Single-point models are driven by a common set of site-specific meteorological and environmental conditions. Five of eight sites have at least three years and up to twelve years of ozone fluxes. The spread across models that de-emphasizes outliers in multiyear mean ozone deposition velocities ranges from a factor of 1.2 to 1.9 annually across sites and tends to be highest during winter compared to summer. No model is within 50 % of observed multiyear averages across all sites and seasons, but some models perform well for some sites and seasons. For the first time, we demonstrate how contributions from depositional pathways vary across models. Models can disagree in relative contributions from the pathways, even when they predict similar deposition velocities, or agree in the relative contributions but predict different deposition velocities. Both stomatal and nonstomatal uptake contribute to the large model spread across sites. Our findings are the beginning of results from AQMEII4 Activity 2, which brings scientists who model air quality and dry deposition together with scientists who measure ozone fluxes to evaluate and improve dry deposition schemes in chemical transport models used for research, planning, and regulatory purposes.

  PublisherDOI

• Predicting the effect of pallet overhang on the box compression strength

  Packaging Technology and Science · 2023-07-13 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract A corrugated box's compression strength can easily be affected by how the box is used, including pallet overhang which reduces a box's effective compression strength (BCT). The specific impact of a given amount of overhang on BCT remains poorly defined. In the current study, a range of box sizes and constructions were examined in over a dozen single‐side overhang configurations and five adjacent‐side overhang scenarios to identify key factors contributing to loss of strength, producing an average reduction in BCT of up to 40%. These results indicated that common safety factors fit well with adjacent overhang scenarios but overestimate single‐side overhang scenarios. We developed a range of multiple linear and nonlinear regression models, estimating the change in a box's compression strength due to overhang compared with a no‐overhang scenario. The impact of overhang on the short and long sides, whether overhang exists on a single side or adjacent side, box size, and board type were all statistically significant. This work also indicates the need for further research refining the first‐order model and extending it to other materials, box sizes, and box aspect ratios.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Tamás Weidinger

  Eötvös Loránd University

  14 shared

• Balázs Grosz

  11 shared

• Virginie Moreaux

  École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences Agronomiques de Bordeaux-Aquitaine

  11 shared

• A. Neftel

  11 shared

• Eiko Nemitz

  UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

  10 shared

• Halka Bilinski

  Rudjer Boskovic Institute

  10 shared

• Christophe Fléchard

  Soil Agro and Hydrosystems Spatialization

  9 shared

• A. Hensen

  9 shared

Labs

• Sustainable BiomaterialsPI

Education

• Ph.D., Forest Biomaterials

  North Carolina State University

  2010

Awards & honors

• ISTA CPLP – Professional Level certification