Steam vs diesel pt II (or coal vs diesel fuel)

Trains Magazine General Discussion
21

Mod,
No, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if GE/Siemens haven’t partnered up and created a pretty good R&D facility.
Nor would it surprise me one bit to see some of the ceramic components you mentioned show up in “everyday” applications, beyond the Honda race team!

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all after seeing some the ultra small engines, the turbine that was the size of a dime and about the thickness of two sheets of paper, simply amazing.

But my point was, having in hand a better system, and selling that system to a manufacturing concern for production, or selling the system to an end user are two different things.

I would not be surprised if such a steam plant didn’t exist in prototype form now, but if it did, I doubt the maker would have much success selling it, until the profit incentive was so huge that shutting off their diesels and switching to steam wouldn’t cost a dime at start up.
Railroads are notorious about how they spend money…sometimes they buy and build the most god awful stupid things…most of the time, they squeeze a dime until it screams.

An analogy from the automotive world would be the “New” Bugatti, for 1.2 million dollars, you get 0 to 60 in 2 seconds, tops out around 250 mph…dollar for dollar the worlds fastest production car(at least 50 standard models built) with 1001 brake horsepower…for what it is, and how it is marketed, it is the most efficient “fast” production car on the market…but it also has 16 radiators, three for the engine water, three for the intercoolers, three for the engine oil, two for the transmission oil, two for the drive axel, and I forget what the other ones were for, but you see the point, which is not everyone will want one, no could everyone afford one or afford to keep it running if they could.

The technology being discussed here, while in existence, so far has not been cobbled together in a marketable form, the drawbacks and startup cost exceed the profit to the u

22

I bet they were saying the same thing about diesels in '37

23

Yes, but Ed’s largely right. The big thing going for EMD in '37 was the systems approach (and yes, the deep pockets from GM helped, but the tech input from people like Boss Ket more so imho). All the pieces were designed to work together, all the lessons reasonably assimilated. (I don’t know how much of this had to do with Sloan at GM and how much with Dilworth at EMC, but it certainly worked out right!)

In order for something like modern steam to work (as I see it) you indeed do need to provide the entire infrastructure, or at least subcontract it with 100% quality assurance of ‘customer’ satisfaction – that’s not just the leasing department and management, it’s the Randy Stahls and mudchickens who have to keep things working. I do NOT think the appropriate financial model would be to sell or lease the locomotives; I’d think that some kind of ‘power by the hour’ arrangement (with acceptable QoS) would be needed. Fuel arrangements would be worked out with appropriate third-party vendors, who would also arrange for the capital improvements, specialized staff and maintenance, etc. involved with the ‘supply chain’ for the fuel from mine to bunkering on the locomotive. I see similar arrangements made for water treatment, running maintenance of specialized systems, etc. I think it is appropriate to arrange for a minimum assured volume per month, and assurances of a certain number of months of ‘guaranteed’ demand (with insurance arrangements in place to cover any contingency otherwise) as incentives for suppliers to run up the ‘learning curve’ and acquire familiarity with the technologies that are specialized. Etc. (This is all fairly standard consultant-style stuff).

Ed’s also right that this is about fleets, not demonstrators touring around the national rail system with five cars of parts and special equipment in tow. I think there’s the same kind of support ‘hole’ in locomotives as there is in automobile production, in the sense that it’s not difficult to provision and run one

24

A few months ago The Wall Street Journal ran a story about commercial nuclear fusion. A consortium of governmental and private investors are making plans to build a commercial fusion reactor in France because the French have extensive experience with nuclear fission technology. Apparently the science behind the controlled fusion process is getting tantalizingly close to commercial applications; and, when that happens, THAT WILL BE THE MILLENIUM!

A steam turbine whose source of heat is controlled nuclear fusion will, in effect, essentially freeze the cost of electricity for all time.

Nuclear fusion does produce a gaseous by-product though, the chemically inert gas helium. I don’t know in what quantity per delivered kilowatt-hour, but I’m guessing it’s far less than the CO, SO2, CO2, and NOx compounds presently belched by fossil fuels.

So, among the transportation modes currently available including barges, trucks, air freight and railroads, which one do you suppose is best postioned to take advantage of cheap electrical propulsion?

“Catenary ueber alles!”

25

Would widespread use of non-condensing steam engines violate water conservation standards? I’ve heard some claims that water is actually scarcer than oil. The Great Lakes governors and Canada recently signed an agreement banning diversion of Great Lakes water out of the region and California has had fairly strict standards for quite some time.

26

Bob – better look at a large number of details concerning fusion generation before you conclude that regular helium is the only byproduct – start with lithium blanketing, and continue through neutron activation of the structure. (Of course, it’s important which of the fusion reactions your technology will involve – e.g. whether you want all charged particles as reaction products to use for direct inductive generation).

FWIW, of course the amount of product from any fusion generator will be orders and orders of magnitude less than the stuff from conventional powerplants – BTW, have you read “The Radiological Hazards of Coal-Fired Powerplants” for an even better argument? But have you looked at where the tritium in a D-T cycle is going to be coming from, with the weapons program and Savannah River out of the picture? THOSE emissions would factor in, too…

Very little has changed for the better regarding the cost of commissioning and decommissioning a commercial-scale fusion plant in the last few years, and when you include those costs in the per-kwh numbers it’s still (imho) far from being competitive with other commercial alternatives, even if the fusion and cycle technologies are taken as fully mature and their support infrastructures either fully subsidized or costed-down. Remember ‘too cheap to meter’? It would seem that the report you were reading is making the same sorts of assumptions… ;-} Perhaps, assuming something to stabilize capital charges, security, etc. etc. etc., you would have some kind of Bekenstein bound on the cost of a kwh of electric power, but I’ll buy a round if that cost comes anywhere close to an equivalent kwh of the ‘logical suspect’ alternatives that don’t involve delicate thermonuclear technologies… well, at least ground-based ones.

up829 – an interesting issue. I suspect that the political aspect of this is far more significant than anything technical. Considering that the water used in modern steam requires some pretreatment a

27

The engineering issues have been hashed out fairly thoroughly so far, so I won’t touch that thread beyond reminding FM and other steam proponents that all coal is not alike. PRB coal is sub-bituminous, it has less sulfur but it also has less BTU’s. Like power plants, locomotives would have to be designed for a specific grade of coal, and efficiency would go down with any other grade.
Environmental issues have barely been touched, and effects of a large fleet of coal-fired locomotives on the price of coal have barely been addressed. These are also factors that need to be considered.

28

Let me clear up some things:

  1. Overmod, is your “5%” figure for locomotive fuel costs purely operations, or operations and financial amoratization of the locomotive? If diesel fuel at $1.00/gal represents 5% of operating costs of a locomotive, what % does $2.00/gal represent?

It just seems that the 5% figure is too low, seems like it would be more in the 20 to 30% range. If the typical locomotive travels (and I’m guessing here) 100,000 miles a year and burns 250,000 gallons (at 2.5 gallons per mile) per year, at $2/gal that’s $500,000 per year in fuel cost. Operations are maybe $75,000 per year depreciation, crew costs are maybe $200,000 per year per locomotive, add maintenance and insurance, that’s maybe $500,000 in non-fuel operating costs. That’d be $1,000,000 per year per locomotive, and in this scenario fuel accounts for half that cost.

Are my numbers even close?

  1. rdganthracite - You have to remember that convering coal and oil sands into liquid fuel adds costs, because oil had to be above $40/barrel for those techniques to be viable. In my view, if you are going to use coal for fuel, you want to keep it as close to the mine price as possible, othewise the cost advantage over petroleum-based diesel is erased. I think the best possible scenario is to use synthetic coals which take out most of the moisture, ash, and non-combustables while keeping the price under $75/ton. Examples include the Colstrip Syncoal product, Cowboy coal, FkX(?), others (?). These all use simpler thermal and mechanical breakdown of low rank coals to create “purer” higher rank coals. It’s when you liquify and gasify the coal that the price starts to skyrocket.

  2. Michael, et al - Much of the Tier II and III mitigation could conceivably take place at a sationary site such as the syncoal plant, leaving much less onboard pollution sources that would have to be taken care of.
    I also believe that any locomotive manufacturer who would dare offer a coal bur

29

Econometric models that I have seen and worked on show that for a 15,008 ton grain unit train, operating at between 2.8 and 3.3 hp/ton, taking into account the direct variable costs of train operation including crew costs, locomotive type, locomotive financing, and hopper car financing, at $1.10 per gallon, fuel costs represent between 29% and 33% of total direct variable operating cost of the train, and at $2.00 per gallon, would represent between 42% and 47% of direct operating costs with the following assumptions: 75% of operating time is between notches 5 and 8, and 25% of transit time is between notches 0 and 5, average train speed 22 mph. Because of the study location, this algorithm is probably on the high side compared to flat ground.

If the assumption is changed to reflect, in this instance, that company owned cars (BNSF) are average age 20 years old and bear no direct associated financing costs, fuel costs approach 60% of the costs described at $2.00 per gallon at 3.20 hp/ton.

Best regards, Michael Sol

30

My proposal for moving power plant technology to locomotives was simply to indicate what I believe a modern road freight steam locomotive would be, but that does not say that I necessarily expect this to happen or am even advocating anything like it. Actually, I would PREFER ELECTRIFICATION. This uses existing technology, and is definitely economically feasible IF:

Real estate taxes on railroad rights-of–ways are exempt from increases when used by power companies as transmission line corridors in addition to their railroad use. And when the railroad is electrified.

Such an exemption would to a great deal to encourage electrification. Power companies are looking for additional corridors; the transmission can be used to feed the substations; the power companies can pay for the electrification RofW costs and charge for the power as metered on the locomotives.

As for the technical problems associated with growing electrification mileage in a basically diesel network:

Diesel locomotives modified to share electric power with mu’ed electrics, all twelve axles available in either electric or diesel mode, one operating as slug for the other; either locomotive usable separately when desired.

Tunnels electrifed with low-voltage (750V) high current center third rails, Lionel at full scale, with retractible roller shoes. In the portal overlap zones concrete roadbed with heaters for snow removal.

If diesel dynamic braking grids are used (not really required if mountain heavy-duty lines are those that are electrified first with regenerative braking, possibly in some cases requiring flywheel or battery technology at substation to absorb and store the energy), they would of course be duplicated by identacle grid resistors on the electric locomotive “mate.”

31

FM, the 5% is a percentage of overall system expense, including ‘amortization’ of capital and development charges. The Europeans who did the 8055 project were the ones who generated the numbers, and I don’t have the direct data at hand (I feel sure that there are people on this list who can get them relatively quickly, though – hint, hint.)

I think the principal cost of oil shale, tar sand, etc. is that of processing and separation of the organics from the matrix material, not nearly as much with subsequent refining of the ‘crude’. I don’t see this changing much in the future, and of course there are energy costs connected with this that can’t be avoided (or that use the most convenient sources of ‘renewable’ energy easily).

Michael Sol’s comments about the percentage involved in VARIABLE OPERATING cost are valid enough to be taken without further comment by me. It should be possible to inject R&D cost for modern steam locomotives (etc., including the extra infrastructure/maintenance estimates specific to steam power) into this same model without serious modification to see what the effect of cheaper fuel vs. higher transportation/maintenance expense would produce, and generate some of those curves that economists love that would give some idea of the ‘best’ options.

Technically, the “Tier II/III mitigation” you’re talking about is actually the reduction of components in the fuel, notably sulfur, fuel nitrogen, and undesired ash components. You would still have to have EPA-compliant firing controls, etc. on the locomotives to control combustion effectiveness and reduce generation of NOx and various unburned hydrocarbons – some of the syncoal operations may help with that, but only peripherally imho. In the last sentence, “all they need” is a WHOLE lot more detail-intensive than you may think…

Dave: interesting take on the taxation issue. The effective model here has already been implemented (across the Jersey Meadows by PSE&G) which is

32

Here’s a link to the spec sheet for one of the synthetic coal products (KfX) coming to market…

http://www.kfx.com/fact_sheets/KFxProductSpecs.pdf

…some of the emissions specs (I assume based on thermal combustion)

Btu/lb – 11,000
sulfer 0.3%
SOX (lb/mmBtu) – 0.6%
NOX – “25% lower” (than PRB coal)
Mercury – <3lbs/T Btu

With regards to SOX, how does the 0.6% compare to low sulfer diesel?