Fuel Needs

Does anyone know if locomotives of the future could be powered by Natural Gas or algae-based biodiesel? I believe that it would be nice if corporations are currently researching these possibilities to meet tomorrow's travel demands...

Thomas wrote:Does anyone know if locomotives of the future could be powered by Natural Gas or algae-based biodiesel? I believe that it would be nice if corporations are currently researching these possibilities to meet tomorrow's travel demands...

A lot depends on what you have and this case expect to have and at what price.

For instance during World War II the Swiss had lots of hydro-electric power but not much coal or an adequate supply of electric locomotives or MUs, So they converted a few steam engines to boil water with electricity. If all you have is a hydro plant and a steam locomotive it's attractive. You wouldn't want to do that if you were building a new locomotive.

UP used to run turbine locomotives on bunker fuel/No. 6 oil. Because the refineries were practically giving it to them so that they would haul it away, People figured out how to make plastic out of that and they were willing to pay more for it than UP was willing to. UP doesn't run turbine locomotives any more.

People run diesel engines on natural gas all the time. Backup generators mostly but there are places where it makes sense to run the air conditioning on a natural gas engine than it is to run the air conditioning with an electric motor. And running your small backup generator on natural gas or propane makes sense if you don't want to be bothered with long term storage of gasoline. If you heat the house with No. 2 heating oil because there is no natural gas service, running your small backup generator on diesel is much more attractive than running it on natural gas.

.. you can run a diesel engine on almost anything. What that anything is depends on how much anything costs. Diesel locomotives can run on biodiesel, it's been tested, no one does it because biodiesel is more expensive than petroleum diesel. The people with natural gas run diesels don't use diesel because natural gas is cheaper, for them, than diesel fuel. Propane, another alternative, travels by rail all the time. No one has done the trival engineering to fuel a diesel locomotive with a railroad car propane tanker because propane is more expensive than diesel. What do you have in mind?

You lose a little bit of Horsepower running on Bio-Diesel,depending on the blend,NMRX is using Bio-Diesel.
Some cities now require that Bio-Diesel is sold instead of regular Diesel fuel(Ft Worth Tx,Portland Or for example).

What were the results of the BN experiment where they ran locomotives using fuel tenders (tank cars lettered BN) filled with LNG?

BobLI wrote:What were the results of the BN experiment where they ran locomotives using fuel tenders (tank cars lettered BN) filled with LNG?

Those tests ended when the price of natural gas rose.
BNSF will start testing natural gas locomotives this fall.

Dutch,Is there any town,city,village in southern Conn,or in NY State, that requires the use of any type of Bio-fuels??

No there is none , and Towns have no say in railroad operations

Thomas, do you have a lobbying interest in alternative fuels? AC or DC propulsion ops being expanded would probably looked at first before those. The locos are a bit more involved then city transit buses to convert...

freightguy wrote:Thomas, do you have a lobbying interest in alternative fuels? AC or DC propulsion ops being expanded would probably looked at first before those. The locos are a bit more involved then city transit buses to convert...

,,,there was a BNSF study done to see when it makes sense to electrify. Pity it's evaporated from the Internet. If I remember correctly electifying makes sense for BNSF when diesel is $4 a gallon. Searching for "BNSF natural gas locomotive" comes up quite a few things. And the interesting little tidbit that they estimate 48 cents of natural gas is equal to a gallon of diesel...

Sorry should of included I meant for Metro North. It was posted in this forum not for the national freight carriers

There is an article in Trains magazine this month about natural gas power for locomotives.

BNSF seems to be one of the few doing it, due to the initial costs (as it's owned by Berkshire Hathaway and isn't subject to the demands of Wall Street for short-term results). Thus I don't see a government-sponsored RR taking the lead on the technology--maybe only after BNSF gets it developed well enough to be widely adaptable at low cost.

UPDATE: I see that Metrolink in California may be doing some studies of it as well.

My neighbor had a state fleet CNG Civic- the tank was the same size as the 15 gal gasoline tank but only held the equivalent of 8 gasoline gallons. Propane gas has more carbon per unit of volume of your choice than methane (no idea about LPG, except it is widely used in cars in places where gas stations are rare). Liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel have even more carbon per unit of choice, and are stored at the same pressure as the surrounding atmosphere. BNSF might get good result shuffling around with a switcher, but to run all day across the prairie or back and forth to the suburbs on CNG, we're going to need engines with bigger fuel tanks or a CNG tender.

Plus diesel doesn't have to be compressed using added cost pumps. There are all kinds of tricks to reduce diesel emissions. Worst case scenario with diesel, apart from spills, is if it gets too cold diesel and especially bio-blends get gummy- won't flow. Instead of running their trucks all night, the Soviets in Siberia lit bonfires under them to keep the motor oil and diesel liquid. Worked great.

But using electricity to make steam for engines- most amazing rail thing I've heard since I learned about the German scheme to build 3m gauge lines across Europe after WW2; trains complete with swimming pools. Much more efficient to heat with a flame than a coil.

What are the decibel levels of current diesel commuter locomotives, such as the Genesis Locomotive?

NKCR railway uses "Ruby Red bio-Diesel". I think it is a Cenex product. I don't know what grain is used in producing it, but I suspect corn.
And the stuff really is red!

I couldn't tell any difference between it and regular Diesel, except for the color (regular Diesel is pale yellow).

I really question the wisdom of using a food product for fuel. With so many products being based on corn these days, one big ethanol plant can consume all the corn grown in a large area. And with corn going into fuel production, plastics, and other non-food uses, it drives up the costs of corn-based food products and the price of corn-fed meat. Another problem with ethanol plants is the large amounts of water they consume.

If we are going to use biomass-based fuels, far better of we use something that we are not dependent on for food.

Les

Desertdweller--
(SERIOUSLY off the railroad topic, but...) Re your reservations about using corn-based bio-fuel: one of the early casualties of the program to produce more ethanol was... the catfish industry. Many people in the U.S. south had started operations to grow catfish for the food market, depending on cheap corn to feed the fish, and when the price of corn went up in response to the new demand from ethanol mfrs....