What is the possibility of railroads being able to run on gassified coal? Hitler ran his Wehrmacht machine on gassified coal, so the technology has been available for 60+ years. In the 1970’s James Rhodes, governor of Ohio, tried to get the Feds interested in upgrading the technology, but they weren’t interested. Currently jet fuel is being made from coal so why not expand this to something that will run locomotives? They coal that we are exporting could be used to solve part of OUR fuel problems and cut down on our dependence on foreign energy sources.
The Twin Cities & Western and their subsidiaries (Minnesota Prairie Line and Red River Valley & Western) are running at least some of their locomotives on bio-diesel.
I remember Burlington Northern experimenting with different types of fuel. I specifically remember a picture of a fancy painted SD40-2 with some kind of fuel car behind it. Don’t know what became of it.
The environmental organizations have already said they are opposed to making gasoline out of coal because they claim it produces 20% more carbons than regular gasoline. Since they own the Democratic Party I can’t see any progress in this area.
The individual environmentalists I know, and there are plenty of them since this is essentially a “college town” are all opposed to digging and using coal for anything. They really aren’t rational–but then when’s the last time you’ve heard any news organization, other than maybe Fox, point that out?
I wonder how many of those purple-haired environmentalist fruit-cakes it’d take to pull a 75 car unit grain train with bicycles?
[:P]
BN was experimenting with Natural gas both in compressed and liquiefied form, the SD40-2 you are thinking off used LNG with the engine modified to run in a dual fuel configuration.
I find it interesting that we have 4-5 threads going right now on this very forum with alternate locomotive fuel discussions (refer to the threads about modern gas turbine and steam locomotives)…
One way to implemment this is using coal-to-gas technology to produce synthetic “natural gas” (a production plant is operating in Wyoming right now) and burning the fuel in a modified (spark initiated or dual fuel) engine or gas turbine.
There also has been some work done over the years in a locomotive “tender” unit that would supply producer gas to one or more connected locomotives. EMD, Caterpillar, and MK Rail all did design work on such a system (no prototype was built). Emissions control (particularly sulphur) would pose a challenge.
I recently read online that a research organization in Australia has successfully developed a method for sufficiently micronizing coal (either in pulverized or slurry form) to the point that it could be used in a modified diesel or gas turbine. The paper specifically referenced both the Union Pacific experimental coal fired gas turbine locomotive as well as General Electrics coal fired diesel experiments of the late eighties early nineties. They claim to have overcome the pitting and abrasion problems GE and UP encountered. However they are mainly developing this for stationary power generation applications (the system requires flue gas scrubbers and other emissions contol equipment). I guess the challenge with adapting this to mobile equipment would be getting
I believe you’re referring to coal-to-liquids (Fischer-Tropsch which used to make gasoline during the second World War) and there are a number of pilot projects as well as plans for full scale production in the US. SASOL in South Africa has produced much of that country’s diesel fuel from coal for years. Both BNSF and NS have shown interest in this recently. The “Could Steam make a comeback” thread has a lot of posts about the pros and cons.