This is another interesting article by noted transportation/energy researcher Harry Valentine. He makes some good points for using coal/water slurry as a fuel of choice for transportation.
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1279
Reciprocating steam, anyone?
The idea has been around for years. My understanding was they were needing technoligy to catch up with the dynamics of the stuff. Limitations because of abrasion and others.
At the end pf the day it is more efficient to use the coal to generate electricity. As far back as 1910, the New York & New Haven RR found that it was getting twice as much useful drawbar horsepower per ton of coal burnt at its generating station for its electric trains than what every ton of coal burnt in the fireboxes of its steam locos produced.
In the current issue of “Modern Railways” Roger Ford, the technical editor re-asserts this view by comparing the effiiciency of an electric loco (the proposed British Rail class 88 of 1978; the Chunnel class 92 built in 1994 are similar in horsepower and performance) with the current diesel locos from EMD and the BR 9F 2-10-0 steam locos of the 1950s. These last were among the best British steam locos ever built but were only 8% efficient; whereas a modern coal fired generating statuon is about 45-50% efficient.
Did they take into account transmission losses in the distribution system. That and other factors result in less than that at the rail. Factors such as voltage reduction and conversion to a working voltage at the traction motor. If these boys have eliminated the carbon problem they may have something.
I really enjoy reading Harry Valentine’s stuff but I’m not quite sure what qualifies him as a “Transportation expert”. Is he a Mechanical engineer?
The US Railroad industry is never going to buy new steam power, even though there are some interesting proposals out there. I’m thinking of Valentine as well as T.W Blasingame (google the name). What the industry may very well adopt is the use of synthetic diesel made from coal, that is a mature technology already in use in other parts of the world.
I think so. Roger Ford in his piece in “Modern Railways” also took this into account.
With regard to making diesel fuel from coal, this is indeed a mature technology. They’ve been doing it in South Africa for many years, as no-one would supply them with oil during the apartheid years. I suspect neighbouring Zimbabwe is also doing this as no-one will supply them with oil because President Mugabe’s completely bankrupted their economy so they’ve no foreign exchange. (Even the Chinese wont lend them money any more!).
He said 40 to 50% at the generating plant is also 40 to 50% at the rail? They are doing much better than Amtrak’s NEC.They must be very jealous of the Chunel class 92’s. With no transmision loss they have overcome the laws of resistance. [alien] [(-D]
I said coal power stations are 40% - 50% efficient. By contrast a steam loco is only about 8% efficient. I’ll dig out the Moderrn Railways article so I can get the full figures.
40% maybe for a brand spankin new state of the art power station, most of the ones currently in operation are probably in the 30 - 35% efficiency range.
I’ve now got the article from “Modern Railways” in front of me as a type. In Britain about 1.5% of electricty generated is lost in the grid due to voltage drop etc. Converting the current to kinetic energy involves some loss too, but typical electric locos are about 90% efficient. So the author of the article calculartes that a 6MW / 8,000ho electric loco could “bowl along the East Coast Main line at 60mph hauling 42 102 tonner capacity coal cars using the equivalent of 0.03% of its payload per hour”.
He does not give comparative figures for the EMD class 66 locos, the current standard for coal trains here, but the BR 9F 2-10-0 steam locos of the 1950’s produced the equivalent of 1.54 MW burning coal at the rate of 2.1 tonnes per hour, which gives an efficiency of 8.3%.