Ok, being in the Natural Gas industry, I have seen my company do away with CNG fueled vehicles in favor of traditional gasoline trucks. On the other hand, one of the major producers it investing quite a bit of money to upgrade some traditional gas stations with CNG fueling stations, mainly so they can convert their fleet to CNG. This was making me think, has a CNG fueled locomotive been attempted? Would EMD be the first to attempt it as they are now owned by Caterpillar and have access to the CAT G3600 series engine? Is it feasible?
Energy Conversions did a LNG conversion of Burlington Northern SD 40’s about 20 years ago. The reason for using LNG instead of CNG is because of the relative volume of LNG compared to CNG. The BN units did require that the LNG be heated to a gas for use in the dual fuel engines. Most EMD conversions on gas pipe lines and on drill rigs take the gas fuel straight.
I operate a plant that processes the gas and makes it clean for retail sales, and we operate 7 engines, 30 are CAT 3600, 3 are Waukesha 7000 series, and also a pair of Solar (a Cat company) Titan T130 turbines. and we pull our fuel gas directly out of the residue side (Clean gas after the process). The reason I asked is I didn’t know if it had been attempted… I am thinking that it would almost require a fuel tender to get the volume required to run one for an extended length of time.
Look at Energy Conversions website, they have all the info on the BN dual fuel LNG experiment. There is also information on the spark ignited EMD engine they built for use on some wine train loco in California.
You bet they do…several small manufactureres as well as the big guys…see stories, pictures,and advertisements in TRAINS…it is the magainze of railroading!
They looked like this…
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Look at Energy Conversions website, they have all the info on the BN dual fuel LNG experiment. There is also information on the spark ignited EMD engine they built for use on some wine train loco in California.
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That was an interesting starting point; (link) http://www.energyconversions.com/
Note scroll down and check index; Lists ASME PDF’s that may be of interest to you about their research and projects.
THe UTAH RAILS Website at :http://www.utahrails.net/up/up-loco-features.php#fuel-tenders
has anintersting bit on the BN RR project for Bi Fueled diesels in the early 1990’s as well as a bit about the UPRR conversion of 4 units to burn LNG two GE 9554/9555 and EMD Sd-60’s 6364/6365. They were supplied by specially contracted fuel source @ FTA:"…“Amoco Production Co. is producing a special blend of liquefied natural gas at its Painter Complex Gas Plant in Evanston, Wyo., for Union Pacific Railroad’s locomotive test program…”
The following linked article goes into the Burlington Northern Fuel Tender (Diesel) program:
(linked)http://www.mtnwestrail.com/wyoming/bnft.htm
And then there is this link to a site about Boise Locomotive ( nee: Morrison-Knudson and their LNG Locomotibve Projects and research.
http://www.lngplants.com/1200G.html OR( this additional inked page)>
I guess my next question id that they tried this in the early 90s, and it was apparently found ot be uneconomical. What about now with diesel prices up and natural gas sunk to its lowest numbers in years. Also, the new technology that has been developed since with both natural gas engines and more economical gas processing. I just finished my most recent set of work days, and using our newest facility started in august, we are unintentionally liquefying the methane.
Is it time to be revisited?
Natural gas has a lower btu content than diesel fuel and can not be compression ingnited, adding the complecation of a spark ingniton. This plays to the diesel’s strength, simplisety, low fuel use and high tourqe. It also takes special insulated tankage to keep lng liquid. Add the cost of fuel distrubtion and storage it would take a very large differance in price to make it a paying move. This has also been tryed in the trucking ind. Mostly in short haul service in the gas and oil fields. Weight is a problem, along with range.
For using LNG on a locomotive, they will use it once they figure how to put the fuel tender at the other end of the train. In other news, however, Harvey Gulf is going to build 2 PSV’s for use in the Gulf of Mexico using LNG fueled dual fuel engines. There is also interest in trying LNG on ferries. The LNG tankers seem to have a good safety record but the Norwegians who are going to build on just had an engine room fire on one of their conventional ferries. I sure wouldn’t be anywhere near aLNG powered ferry during a fire. The dual fuel engines use about 10% diesel fuel for ignition of the gas fuel. Much simpler than screwing around with an ignition system, throttle and turbo waste gate just to maintain the correct air fuel ration.
Something just occurred to me. Aren’t CNG and LNG considered hazardous when hauled as freight, and buffer cars required between them and the locomotives? How is it that the fuel tenders are coupled next to the locomotives in the illustrations? Are there some safety features incorporated in the fuel tenders? Beefed up or something?
Railpower Industries designed a compressed Natural Gas fueled turbine electric locomotive that they tried to promote to the industry but it didn’t get to the demonstrator stage. They were proposing using lightweight composite gas cylinders and a Solar Tubine (a brand name owned by Caterpillar not to be confused with a turbine powered by solar energy) rated at 5500 HP.
R.J Corman,Railpower’s new corporate parent, doesn’t seem to be persuing the idea, and there is currently no info about it on Railpower’s website.
Here is the original patent with design info and drawings:
If all fails you could look into using the Fischer - Tropsch “gas to liquid” process to make synthetic diesel fuel which will automatically be ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD).
Probably the best thing to synthesize from natural for diesel engines would be di-methyl ether. This would still require some major changes to the injection system as the stuff is unlikely to have the lubricity of normal diesel fuel. It should be extremely clean burning.
OTOH, a gas turbine burning CNG or LNG would be even cleaner burning.
- Erik
What in the world was this? Went looking. Found some information, and this one site seemed to have pretty good information: http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/ The PDF starts with some history and process formulas.
I seem to recall that pre-war Germany was pretty much into the manufacture of fuels for it military machine . This seems to fit into that time frame (pre-WWI and prior to WWII) and their availibility of coal. (?)
Thanks for posting Creepycrank! Kinda interesting![tup]
The Union of South Africa back when they were isolated built a 300,000 barrel per day F-T plant which is still in operation and the railroad uses the synthetic fuel it produces straight up. That’s standard EMD and GE loco engines. The difference is that the fuel is made from coal. In any case its cheeper than conventional diesel fuel.