Then why not haul it in side dump gondolas instead of tank cars? According to Fred Frailey’s excellent article in this month’s Trains, adding dilbit at the source (Alberta) and then removing the dilbit on the refinery (Louisiana/Texas) end is a cumbersome, wasteful, and costly process for both pipeline and rail transportation.
“Consumer” bitumen (the stuff the paving companies use) gets hauled in heater-equipped cars - a possibility I believe Fred mentioned. I think the problem is the lack of same.
I’ve never seen “raw” bitumen, so I don’t know if it would be conducive to hauling in a side-dump gon. It could be that while it’s too thick to run through a pipe, it might be too oozy to load in an open car that most certainly leaks.
As a side note, those fellows who haul asphalt from the plant to the paving site coat the boxes of their dump truck before the asphalt is put in. I think they use naphtha, but don’t quote me on that. I know of one driver who neglected to do so and ended up shoveling his load off. Could not have been fun.
That means that even if it were possible to haul the bitumen in a gon, you still have to introduce another substance into the overall mix to make things work right.
Ulrich,
I suggested a concept for hauling bitumen in open top cars and dumping with a rotary dumper on Fred’s blog site, but I was told it would not work. What a surprise.
I speculate that bitumen could be shipped by rail in a totally undiluted form in open top cars rather than in tank cars. The cars could be smooth inside with rounded corners and a fair amount of draft taper. Then for unloading, the car could be rotary dumped.
The open top car I mention could have a hinged cover to keep contaminants out. The car would not take an excess amount of time to dump. Once inverted, the contents would release and drop within seconds.
The key to dumping would be to use a release liner made of something like 20 mil HDPE. The liner would be seamless and made to fit the car cavity. It would be installed with an inserter machine prior to loading. Then when the car is inverted for dumping, the film would promote a 100% free release of the bitumen. The film liner would be discharged with the bitumen and be burned up in the processing. Very little, if any, interior cleaning of the car would ever be needed.
It seems like a real hardship to put bitumen in tank cars and then have to steam heat it to get it to flow out through a pipe. And even then, the process still requires thinning with the use of, and handling of diluent, although it does require less diluent than the pipeline option.
What I am suggesting eliminates the use of diluent. So it offers four advantages over the tank car handling method:
-
Eliminates the need to thin the bitumen with diluent.
-
Eliminates the thermal energy needed to heat the bitumen for unloading.
There’s probably something we’re not understanding. As Trees noted above, it may be that the stuff would get stuck in the gondolas unless the gondolas are somehow treated beforehand, and then we’re back to square one. I will say though, that from a publicity standpoint the side dumps would be an easier sell than running tank cars through towns. No one would expect side dumps to explode even if they did derail.
Maybe load the stuff on flatcars, and when the train arrives at the refinery it slowly pulls under a large scraper that plows the stuff off. There’s a problem for the engineers out there.
I am not proposing the use of gondolas or any currently existing rolling stock. This would require a new open top car that has a smooth interior with rounded corners and a taper-- all sort of like the interior geometry of a bathtub. The point would be to encourage the bitumen to release from the car when it is inverted. Technically, you would say that the car interior sides would have draft taper.
I assume that during winter, the bitumen would be as solid as concrete. I am not sure about how viscous it would be during summer, but I assume it would still be relatively solid. The polyethylene film liner that I mentioned above would prevent the bitumen from sticking to the car interior which could happen despite the draft taper if the material was loaded warm and then froze.
So if this sh…tuff is that solid, we’d have to assume that when it’s dumped, either by a side dump or a rotary-dump gon, it’s going to come out as pretty much a large blob.
Then what?
How does one move it from where it was dumped to make room for the next carload? A conveyor belt that occasionally gets a multi-ton blob to drop somewhere? Loaders and air hammers?
You might have to devise a way to warm it up in order to loosen it up. And if that’s the case, I’d rather expend a little bit of energy on a closed steam system in a confined area than try to heat something in the open.
Just dump it and let the refinery deal with it. They have great ability to warm things up. It is going into the refinery to be cooked anyway, so thawing it out would just be a part of that process. I would say drop it onto a conveyor and take it into the refinery complex. Details would have to be worked out so it could drop onto the conveyor without doing damage, but all that can be worked out.
The bitumen has to be thawed out no matter who does it. So that cost is in the product no matter who does the thawing. So having the refinery thaw it might not give more money the railroads by not haveing to thaw it.
But, it seems like the whole process of unloading would be much faster and more efficient by just dumping the bitumen if a few seconds rather than spending a lot of time cooking it up in the tank cars just to get it out. I would think those tank cars would also need a fair amount of interior cleaning from time to time.
So maybe everyone would make more money by shipping in open top cars and dumping them. Maybe our gasoline would be cheaper.
The cars would probably need to have hinged covers to protect the bitumen.
I have to say, you guys have certainly given me a good laugh.
I’m certainly not trying to sound rude, condescending, superior or anything else. But you guys have no idea what you’re talking about…lol. I work in the oil sands industry, directly for one of the largest operators. It seems you fine folks…and I do truly mean that…think bitumen is a different product all together from what it really is.
Let me start by correcting a few comments made earlier. Please, keep in mind, I am not trying to be a jerk, or smart ass terminology nazi. I know first hand that the terminology used can be very important to make sure everyone is talking about the same thing. I just want you folks to have the correct info on the subject.
For starters, dibit is not something added or removed from the bitumen. It is in fact the bitumen itself once it has been mixed with diluent, to thin it out. This actually has to be done to process the product in the first place. So adding it is not cumbersome, wasteful or costly process at all. Recovering the naphtha that is used as a diluent is not an issue either, as the product is simply run through an NRU (Naptha Recovery Unit) during processing, and the naptha is shipped back to the source for reuse.
Bitumen is not nearly as solid as you seem to think. Are any of you familiar with the tar like product used to seal concrete basements and such? Bitumen is very much like that. Sort of half way between a paste and a liquid. Shipping in a gondola as suggested, would be horribly messy, and very wasteful. This stuff stick to EVERYTHING! Add to that, that the plants producing it are not setup to handle it unless it is pumped, and you may see part of the issue. Handling costs at both ends would skyrocket, and the production would slow right down to virtually nothing. The diluent would need to be removed at the source, and reintroduced at the
^
Thank you for your sanity!
If the bitumen is so sticky then why doesn’t it gum up the power shovels and trucks that take it out of the ground? I get your point about dilbit, but according to Fred’s article the conversion to dilbit and then the removal of the diluent at the refinery is a cost. As he put it, it’s the packaging the bitumen comes in. He also noted that rail transport requires less diluent than pipeline, thereby bringing the cost of shipping rail more in line with the cost of shipping via pipeline. So the whole dilbit cost thing is indeed a factor to consider, at least according to his article (he put a lot of time into that aspect). I mentioned “cumbersome” ,again, in the context of applying and then removing the diluent. Again, referring to the article, Fred states any diluent used would have to be manufactured/refined and transported to the mine site for use, and then must also be disposed of/recycled at the refinery (which is btw…cost, cost & cost). Don’t laugh too hard at us. There’s a difference between asking questions and pointless speculation. There just might be a better way than the status quo (i.e. tank cars), and a good starting point is often a question presented by someone who isn’t directly involved in the current process and who thus has no vested interest or preconceived ideas on how “it’s done”. We’re just talking here…apparently the rail & tar sands people don’t have all the answers either. Every time I turn on the news there’s a story about a tank train derailment and more bad news about how “the experts” are defiling the landscape in Alberta. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how its supposed to work.
Greasemonkey,
Thanks for your insight. I don’t mind your contradictions, and it does sound like you know what you are talking about. However, you have not quite convinced me that this idea for a different type of rail car transport is from Mars. The devil is always in the details. If we went back to the beginning of time and someone suggested cooking a ball of natural bitumen up and making gasoline, they would be called nuts. As you know, industrial production systems perform seemingly miraculous processes with ease.
My approach to this sort of brainstorming is to formulate an idea based on my knowledge of the subject and throw it out for others to consider. It is a starting point, and all criticism or endorsement can be judged objectively against that starting point. As this forum so wonderfully demonstrates, there is always enormous opposition to improving an established industrial or manufacturing process. It is human nature. People always conclude that if it were a good idea, it would already be in use. That is the catch-22 that pushes back against all innovation.
Let me ask you this: You say that bitumen is tarlike—like a thick paste. If it flows when heated, I assume that its viscosity varies with temperature. So just for clarification; what is its viscosity like at say 75 degrees F? And then what is it like at zero degrees? From what I have heard, I assume that it set up rock-hard at something like northern climate wintertime temperatures. Is that correct, or is it soft and tarlike at those low temperatures too?
When I suggested using a conveyor, I did not mean dropping a big ball of gooey tar onto what looks like a typical open belt co
It’s an idea that might work… Lac Megantic should have taught us that there’s much room for improvement.
Euclid, i may be ignorant about this, but in this matter you do seem to make sense to me. It should be possible develop a petroleum-product liner material that would be less costly to make and apply than the dilutant, and would simply merge into the final product. But Ulriich, that was an unkind and uncalled for remark. Lac Magantic was do to a tragic decision by the trainmaster, by undermaintained locomotives, by one really bad operating practice, by a series of coincidences, and by a real lack of Safety First culture. Euclid, you might consider going into more detail on your car design, and maybe an existing grain gondola that can accept a cover and can still be rotary dumped or whatever would fit the bill. You might want to use the intenet to use the “contact” button on several railcar manufacturers’ website and see if there is interest in your idea. I am about to do this with my braking and derailment sensing proposals-EMD and GE. But you know what, I woiuld not have come to my ideas if I had not first read yours!
I know Dave…I’ve amended my remark and deleted the sarcasm.
The original poster provided an excellent reason for why this product is best shipped in tank cars. Since the plants (customers) prefer to handle this product by pumping, the carrier would serve the customer best by using tank cars. Any other method would mean that the customer would have to adapt to fit the needs of the railroad.
Not really, if a better method is found then, yes, they’d all have to adapt; but all would also reap the benefits.
Up until about 1950 most people who travelled abroad did so by ship and therefore ocean side ports were required. When commercial aviation took hold about 1950 travellers adapted by going to airports…they didn’t expect the airlines to land at the ports. Change usually requires some adjustments for all involved.
Thanks for your encouragement Dave. Good luck with showing your ideas to the locomotive builders. I think this oil-by-rail boom opens the door to a lot of new innovation. There are many organizations and manufacturers that one can present new ideas to. Let us know if you get some feedback.
I put the matter on the two major builder’s website contact forms and will get back to you when and if there is a response. I did work for EMD in 1952, but wished to be fair to both builders. You do the same with the railcar builders, please!
The tar sand material is what the power shovels scoop up, this is (as the name implies) sand with a high bitumen content