Oil prices are high and not likely to fall anytime soon largely due to the increasing need of the growing Chinese economy for fuel. Americans worry about our continuing dependence for foreign oil. Railroads are our largest consumer of diesel fuel. So is the time right to dust off Ross Rowland’s ACE 3000 and return the rails to much cheaper and more plentiful domestic coal? Does homeland security now tip the scales in the argument? Whaddaya think? Check The Ultimate Steam Page for more information.
I have to agree!
BNSFrailfan.
While I did crow about steam on some other threads, I did recently catch a whiff of something about diesel engines returning to coal slurry, a fuel that they burned before diesel fuel as we know it today was developed.
Coal slurry is powdered coal mixed with water.
One of the main problems with coal is that it has a lot of sulfer, which as a combustion byproduct is not very good for the environment.
If you can get the sulfer out, right on.
The short answer is yes. Our federal government regardless of party has done a poor job in making a reasonable attempt to develop alternative fuels for motive power. It is long overdue.
Our institutions seem to have a bad habit of forestalling the building of lifeboats until the ship is listing hard to port.
Without the prudent infusion of federal funds to replace dinosaur poop, sooner rather than later, we will be living once again in a world of very expensive, rationed gasoline whose supply will be prioritized according to national interest.
We spend billions on a space station with no apparent purpose, but consists that move vital materials still can’t move one foot forward without oil.
Its absurd and very risky to place all of our respective eggs in one very fragile and dependant basket. Unfortunately, they will only take this seriously when all of us have finally had enough of this nonsense and speak up.
JRuppert, the Ultimate Steam Page, in the paragraph titled " ACE3000 Dash 8," refers to “fluidized bed combustion (which can cleanly burn high sulfur coal).” I don’t know what the process is, but it sounds like an external combustion steamer may be able to burn coal cleaner than the diesel slurry burner. That’s a guess and I am out on a limb with it, but maybe someone out there knows more about it and will tell us the facts. Somebody call Ross Rowland or Bill Withuhn for some input here!
When the ACE 3000 was first proposed,I thought to myself,“This is what happens when foamers have money”.It is every railfans fantasy for steam to come back,but it is as likely to happen as the government shutting down the airlines(the biggest user of fossil fuel) and telling everyone to “Next time take the train”.
Link to interesting article on Coal to diesel oil pilot plant
http://www.courier-journal.com/business/news2004/07/29/D3-coal29-5476.html
That was an interesting article. CW & I have the C-J delivered daily,
but for some reason,I missed that one.[:(]
I would like to see the ACE 3000 become a reality.
But, back to coal to oil. There are multiple plans for conversion plants. The other day, in the Carroll County Times, they had a small article about a man in Pennsylvania who wants to build one.
[8]TrainFreak409[8]
About synthetic Diesel being cheaper than bringing back the steam locomotive, the whole point of the ACE 3000 is that while the thermal efficiency of the steamer will never equal the Diesel, the fuel is so much cheaper that the steamer has a lower fuel cost than the Diesel, let alone the Diesel run on synthetic oil, made from coal or otherwise.
The low fuel cost of the steam loco is arguable. I talked to a fellow who runs live steam for an amusement park, and he uses a fairly expensive grade of coal because it is a tradeoff with smoke emissions and higher maintenance costs.
But the notion of Diesel fuel costs is not strictly academic. The rail tariff is the biggest chunk of the cost of Wyoming coal served up to a Midwest power plant – more than the mine royalties and the mining cost by far. A big chunk of the rail cost is fuel, almost suggesting that some non-trivial percentage of coal-generated electricity is attributable to burning Diesel fuel in locomotives. You would think that coal-generated electricity is a non-oil energy source but it turns out it isn’t.
Then the question is whether to go with the ACE 3000, which is essentialy the Stephenson steam locomotive, or something more exotic, steam-turbine electric after the Jawn Henry. I used to be in the Jawn Henry camp, but I am beginning to think that a steam-turbine power plant belongs on the ground instead of in the locomotive and if you want steam-turbine power you should string wires and go electric. I wonder if they could string wires over some strategic ruling grades for the Wyoming coal, use dual-mode electric-Diesel locos, and use regenerative braking on the downhill to power trains on the uphill to save energy.
If you are going to go the route of steam, I am beginning to think that instead of building the ACE 3000 where some designer thinks they are going to set everything right that was done wrong in the heyday of steam, one should start with where people left off and make incremental improve
The steam turbine plant of the Jawn Henry, or the C&O M-1, where huge because that was 50’s technology. I propose that a steam turbine powerplant be no bigger than any current diesel electric “plant”, and I am positive it can be done. And have the efficiency of a closed loop system.
I’m sure the ACE 3000 wouldn’t pass Tier 2…
Actually,the thought of going pure electric doesn’t sound bad,
but where are they going to get the power from?
And unfortunately,the"steam turbine electrics"didn’t work.
I was a big "Jawn Henry & M-1 "fan myself.
The “ACE 3000”'s time will probably never come – its horsepower was too low even in the '80s, and its adhesion… 4 powered axles out of 14? Aside from which, its supposed ‘condensing’ operation was a scam under real-world operating and maintenance conditions (read the description that accompanies the patent to see the language substantiating this).
IIRC there were no fundamental problems with Jawn Henry that made the locomotive irreparably unserviceable (as there certainly were with the C&O locomotives!!!) The problem with locomotive steam turbines isn’t so much the road shocks as it’s the buff and draft forces, particularly those resulting from slack action on coal trains; the turbines normally have their shafts aligned longitudinally in the locomotive (same alignment as in diesel-electric packaging) and (at least in the past) didn’t have robust thrust bearings as nobody recognized this was going to be a problem. Doesn’t take much axial movement to have the rotor blades crash into the stators, and even a short contact wrecks the efficiency of the turbine’s flow…
Modern gas turbines would use ceramic construction and magnetic bearings (as in some of the current generation of microturbines). The control circuitry for mag bearings is capable of responding to any shock that can accelerate the structure on which the turbines are mounted. Modern suspensions in locomotives almost by definition should be designed to be ‘kind’ to track geometry, which implies low levels of shock and vibration making it through the secondary suspension to the locomotive frame.
There are proposals under way to develop solid-fuel-fired locomotives, and a number of applicable business (and political) models to get them built.
I’ve done some research into synthesized fuels (e.g., Fischer-Tropsch from coal) which I think represents the best overall system if capital is to be spent on coal energy. Note that a synthesized liquid fuel for external-combustion locomotives can be consid