I was reading an article recently about an Eco rebuild that had a GP unit with a Tier 4 approved 710 in it .
I can see a day when SCR and DEF will be unavoidable and if thats the case Operators may prefer this on a 710 rather than the 1010J .
Presently rebuilding older power to Tier 2 or 3 standards is the cheaper easier option but the day will come when its not possible to do this .
Thoughts ?
Here is a link to a photo of the lcomotive on Chris Tothās website.
Iām curious to know why its stored .
Hopefully it was not just a promo mule .
It requires DEF to operate, and due to the way SCR/DEF was mandated in the United States, the engine controller is required to (as the charming euphemism says) āderate the engine to zeroā when the DEF runs out. Thatās a poor proposition for road operation when there are many non-DEF locomotives already āmothballedā.
Remember that the testing in the mid-2010s only left the NOx emissions noncompliant by a fraction of a percent over about 3% of the test duty cycle. That is not a really significant addition to nitrogen-oxide emission especially given the dramatic reduction in atmospheric HC.
In any case, the entire premise of the locomotive has had the pins kicked out from under it by the development emphasis on zero-carbon. The tech alternatives all lack the characteristics that make catalytic reduction of NO/NO2 necessary in the first place.
The Tier-IV compliant 710 with an aftertreatment system has been available for marine and stationary use for several years under the E23B name.
https://www.progressrail.com/en/Segments/Engines/Marine_Stationary_Engines.html
This article has a shot of a towboat engine room:
Since it seems to be accepted that there will eventually be an EPA Tier V that will most likely kill off any remaining non-DEF engines, it will be very interesting to see the responses to it. Will the manufacturers and railroads bite the bullet and turn to DEF, will alternate fuels like natural gas or hydrogen become more common, will we start seeing mainline electrifications, or will everyone just continue exploiting loopholes and rebuilding older diesels to Tier-III or less?
Are there still hundreds of potential rebuilds sitting around or are they drying up .
I suppose some sort of incentive scheme for the DEF is a lot to hope for .
Still have to wonder with the many locos with intact frames become electrification units with AC traction. Or they might become some kind of hybrid and operate with a diesel s That would be a set up similar to the ALC42Es that run on diesel say on flatlands and E mode on grades?
Well EMD will gladly sell you and SD40J too. Itās not clear to me if the SD70J either the 6 axle or the 8 axle can only be a new frame or not.
I think Overmod has the gist of it. Engines are going into storage. It was a oneoff and at least out west here, donāt know about NS, Battery locomotives are whatās being looked at.
And then thereās hydrogen which is also being looked at.
Unless a T4 710 ALSO reduced CO2 emissions. Which of course, it canāt since thatās the fundamental output of a carbon consuming combustion engine. Itās unlikely there will be a huge market.
As noted though, if T5 comes around and DEF is mandated, well, maybe then weāll see a bunch of ACes and SD70Ms going in for DEF additions.
But I also think weāll se more Hydrogen, more Batteries and perhaps even some catenary go up.
Well it seems CARB has given up on the Zero Emission thing .
I wonder if the new Administration will look into Tier 4 and even consider a slight easing up of its standards .
A recent NOAA report estimated that 25% of the man made VOCās in the LA air basin were from cooking. The report further estimated that 50% of the VOCās were natural and 50% were man made. I suspect cooking is not an insignificant portion of the pm2.5 concentrations.
One for the Diesel engine tech peoples .
We are having an Evolution V12 NR clone being built here and itās supposed to have a large air to air intercooler fitted .
Note donāt bring the intercooler/aftercooler terminology crap into this plz .
From memory effective charge air cooling is supposed to have an effect on combustion temps - higher creating greater NOx emissions .
Iād like to think that the manufacturers have looked into this and tried all they practically can to minimise them .
My understanding is that Progress/EMD stayed with separate circuit liquid to air intercooling , though Iāve no idea what the 1010J T4 units get .
Can super duty intercooling get a 710 over the line ?
For those that wonder what happens when DEF is put in a diesel fuel tank.
I just googled def costs per mile and itās fractions of a penny. Like 1/4 or 1/5 a penny. No wonder my trucking friends donāt complain about it. At least Iāve never heard them complain to me.
Why is it a bigger deal with trains? I honestly donāt know so Iām asking.
No weāve accepted the issues with DEF in the industry from the lack of supplies at times the lack of spare parts when a 2 dollar sensor fails keeping a truck down for a week or more. The toxicity of the freaking DEF itself.
This person put a gallon of DEF in his fuel tank by mistake. It literally ate his fuel and cost 20k to repair the fuel system.
If I remember correctly, the cost of setting up a network-wide DEF infrastructure deterred the Class 1 railroads. I think it was estimated at around 1.5 billion dollars at the time.
Passenger transportation providers seem to have this cost problem to a much lesser extent, because they chose the EMD F125 and the Siemens Charger Tier 4 with DEF, although an MPI/GE locomotive with GE Tier 4 EVO engine without DEF was also in the tender.
The cost problem is less material to F125 and Charger customers, because they are government agencies who are likely adopting SCR/DEF for political reasons, with the costs passed along as part of subsidy costs. An associated point is that (at least in theory) these operations usually feature typical ācommuterā operation that ensures the locomotives cycle past an accessible DEF refilling point frequently enough to keep the tank adequately filled.
But how quickly we forget all the teething troubles Metrolink went through with the implementation of the system, from tank size to freezing to ādefatting to zeroā right in front of the pressā¦
I think that is the reason, not any political ones. EPA regulations just required Tier 4 new locomotives.
The EMD F125 uses a Caterpillar C175-20 engine. How much experience did Cat have with diesel engines with SCR exhaust aftertreatment? They stopped providing engines to truck manufacturers in 2010 just when new EPA regulation required SCR to meet NOX limit. The Cat engines provided for heavy off-road equipment had to meet much higher emission limits which didnāt require SCR.
OTOH Cummins who provided the QSK95 engine for the Siemens Charger had a lot of SCR expierience of their truck engines.
It would be interesting to see the 710 come back. Itās been around since the SD60 and GP60, some RxRs still repower some older GPs and SDs with the 710 ECO repower thing like EMD did a while back with a GP38-2 (I think it was a GP38-2), but it would be more interesting if the 265H made a return, donāt know though its interesting since the SD60ACe testbed uses a reconditioned 710G3 from the SD70ACe
Why should the 710 come back? It is outdated in my opinion. The 2-stroke 710 is less fuel efficient than a 4-stroke diesel engine and latter has less emissions.
The 710 can be useful for small conversions in the absence of a 1010 Tier 3 variant, but not on a large scale.
If there is an EPA Tier 5 rule in the future, then I assume that SCR will be necessary. In the Tier 4 final rule, EPA was already certain that this would only work with SCR. Then it seems to make more sense to me to use the 1010 and downsize if necessary and not the 710.
The 265H is apparently running in China, but why bring it back when you have the 1010?
The 710 should come back, because itās proven its reliability with the SD60 Series, the SD70 Series, and the Repowers/Rebuilds that involved the 710, the 265H is powerful but thereās no shot of the EMD 90 Series ever coming back, Iām not a big fan of Caterpillar engines in EMDs, it doesnāt seem right.