'Biocoal' fuels steam train comeback Trainspotters who find the homogenized world of modern locos a bit dull could soon be celebrating the return of steam, if all goes well in a University of Minnesota study. The university, along with Sustainable Rail International, are to restore a 1930s locomotive – 3463, a 4-6-4 Hudson-type loco built by Baldwin that’s spent …
Same way as charcoal - dry distillation of organic matter.
1. The dry distillation produces most of the nasty stuff (sulphur, nitrogen, etc from proteins go at that stage as sulphur dioxide, etc). What is left after that is nearly pure carbon. It can burn very clean. The problem with it is that it is very porous, takes lots of space and its energy density is a bit crap. That can be solved by pressing it into small pellets ("high density coal").
2. While making biomass into coal requires some energy to start off with it can be made self-sustaining as a side project of partially burning the biomass. Just ask any of the cough, cough, national minorities stripping to bare ground the woods of Eastern Europe and making them into charcoal for sale.
3. As far as a modern steam train having efficiency on par with diesel - that is a given. Steam is not that inefficient. The problem with steam is not the efficiency - it is the maintenance bill. All that regular boiler descaling, cylinder overhauls, gasket changes, etc cost a pretty penny. Add to that having to have regular (and probably in this day and age deionised) water supply along the rail lines. Compared to that with a diesel you just change the oil and the oil filter every few thousand miles and keep filling it up with some rotten dinosaurs.
Are you sure about that? I always understood that the thermal efficiency of steam locomotives was pretty diabolical.
By far the most efficient use of their biofuel would be to burn it in a power station for electric trains, but that wouldn't get them any headlines.
Mind you historically the biggest challenge isn't so much getting your steam engine up to 126mph, which is at least partly a question of finding the right hill, as producing a design that doesn't destroy its centre big end bearing *every* time it gets up to about 120mph...
Bearing issues were sorted very soon after.
The NRM has even stated that if the world speed record got taken, they would restore Mallard and go for a higher speed.
If it wasn't for speed restrictions Mallard could have hit 130mph
A4s could easily cruise at a ton. And the German run was a lot lighter.
Half right - the most efficient way would be to burn the biocoal in the train, produce steam and convert into electricity using a steam turbine. A sort of steam electric rather than a diesel electric.
It's not a new idea, the use of steam to generate electricity is quite old, but adding a steam turbine and doing the converting of energy on the rails is (i think)
Just look at is as a massive Mamod project and scale up - my laptop has a running time of five mins on a full steam (using 2 mamod traction engine boilers and a dynamo) If I applied a bit more science and stored the wasted energy I think I could manage about 15mins. Whilst the initial cost is installing the batteries for storage is a little bit high, as well as all the other gubbings. But over time that cost looks after itself.
AIUI the problem with steam turbines was always flexibility: they have a relatively narrow range of rotation speeds where they operate at peak efficiency. Back in the 40s they found that if the set the thing up for peak efficiency at peak power then it was horrendously inefficient at normal speeds, and if they set it up for peak efficiency at normal speeds it was down on power and efficiency at the top end, and they never solved the problem.
Assuming that's still the case, which seems likely, then the problem still stands when developing an electric transmission. The only way would be to store surplus power for when needed, which would either mean dragging round many tons of batteries, or else having some kind of "feed in" of extra power into a "grid". And of course if you have the grid then there's no point in hauling your own generator set about anyway.
thermodynamic efficiency is very much a function of the ratio between working fluid (steam) peak temperatures and the exhaust temperature (in degrees absolute).
A steam power station struggles to reach 36% with supercritical high temperature steam and heavily condensed low pressure turbines at the arse end.
From memory no steam locomotive ever achieved much more than 20%, and most were less than 10%.
Gas turbines - jet engines and so one - get to about 37% by dint of higher combustion temperatures as do some high efficiency diesels.
The best place to burn coal or biomass is in a power station where the bulk of the condensers is not a drawback. And likewise the scrubbers to remove ash and other noxious elements from the exhaust.
Its an amusing project, but its not a serious contender:
I seem to recall that a few chappies a little over a century ago demonstrated this 'new' highly efficient engine loosely described as an internal combustion engine. It was demonstrated to be significantly MORE efficient than steam (or external combustion) engines. It makes damned all difference as to the fuel (other than internal combustion engines don't tend to process chunks of coal all that well) as you will get better mileage with a litre of petrol in an internal combustion engine than with a steam type external combustion variety.
All this coming from the country that brought us the atomic age. Someone seems to have lost out on some fundamentals somewhere!?
at least deforestation is easy to fix, given the large area of farmland being abandoned in north america. Moderate reversion of grassland to forest elsewhere would also help, if one can ignore the techno-fudists who ignore the creation of grassland by large scale burning by humans destroyed forests in preliterate times.
Steam engines were retired because of the stupendous cost of maintenance. They required continuous, intensive maintenance, and needed total rebuilds far more often than diesel-electrics. Modernized fuels might fix one of their problems, but these old machines will not be cost effective.
Sad. I would love to see them come back.
Steam engines don't share the torque between the wheels like Electric Motors do.
If one wheel slips on a Steam Engine, all the torque and all the power and all the load goes to the other wheels, which then break traction and the whole engines is spinning it's wheels. To stop this, steam engines use sand (or even gravel) on the track, and must be heavy in proportion to their power. Which means they must be very heavy, and the track and bed must be very expensive.
If one wheel slips on a (Diesel) Electric, the torque to that wheel is automatically reduced only enough to so that it is not slipping. Load is not flung suddenly onto the other wheels, the engine can be cheaper and lighter, and the road-bed can be cheaper and lighter.
Furthermore, the Diesel Electric engines can be strung together and all share the load correctly. This never worked very well with Steam Engines: it works very well indeed with Diesel Electric.
This is not some magical digital control system, it is just the characteristic of the kind of electric motors that are used in Diesel Electric trains, the torque is proportional to the phase angle.
If fluidized coal becomes very cheap, we might see some Turbine-Electric trains. We won't see the 'return of steam engines' because they aren't very suitable for pulling trains.
I'd bet on the AT&SF Hudson - similarly design loco's used by the Milwaukee (Baltics on the CMStP&P) were hitting 105 - 110 MPH in regular service while pulling a much heavier train than the Mallard on its record run. The Pennsy T-1 would almost certainly be faster, there were reports of it hitting 125 MPH in service.
I doubt the reports of the americans. The speeds they are claiming are way outside the horsepower curve of those locomotives. They couldn't even theoretically hit those speeds, let alone in practice. The germans with their 05 class were normally pulling heavier loads (Although not on the day of the highest recorded speed, as 50 tons had been dropped), on longer runs ON FLAT GROUND at speeds very close to those of Mallard's record.
Mallards record is somewhat disputable with a sudden surge in speed at a point where the track was at a constant gradient.
See this site for reference: http://www.germansteam.co.uk/FastestLoco/fastestloco.html (Don't mind the amateurish page design though, it's a bit cringe worthy)
The biggest drawback on steam locomotives wasn't efficiency (The early diesels cost much more in terms of running cost) but diesels saved a LOT in terms of maintenance. Not just in the loco itself, but just getting it fired up and then keeping it warm between runs.
Any mechanical engineer that has ever been on the footplate of a steamloco can probably attest to the fact that steam loco's are the closest to a living thing ever built. They are like women, listen carefully and treat her nice and she tells you everything you need to know to keep her happy. Then every once in a while they will have a day where they try to bite your head off for even the slightest of mistake no matter what you do to appease it.
While I would love to see the "old" type of steam loco return to service, I don't see this happening any more. The needed infrastructure and added maintenance costs are just not going to let this work.
Now where is that crotchety old geezer icon... (And I'm only in my mid 20's :-( )
The Milwaukee speeds were from timings aboard regular runs of the Hiawatha between Milwaukee and Chicago. While the peak DBHP occurred below 100 MPH. the loco's were still putting out a significant amount of power. One limitation for the top speed of steam locomotives is dynamic augment, which is lessened with 84 inch drivers and just three coupled axles on the 3463.
As far as the Pennsy T-1's, the design spec called for 100 MPH with 1,000 trailing tons.
Also bear in mind that larger American loading gauge allows for larger boilers - with the gas flow area being critical for power production.
I'll post the same comment I put on gizmag where this surfaced there last week. Firstly all coal is bio-coal by definition and secondly, carbon neutral refers to removing the same amount of carbon from the atmosphere that you put in. It does not refer to putting in the same amount of carbon that the original biomass (allegedly) took out.
If you read the original blurb you'll find this comes from the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, not the Physics or Mech. Engineering departments (who probably react to this announcement somewhat like a well known Kryptonian does when faced with green rocks).
Oh and Richard gets a provisional -1 for lack of attribution (to be withdrawn if he shows that this article isn't a retread).
If i grow a tree from a seed, then cut it down and burn it, surely that is carbon neutral as well? The thing is, I have taken action that causes the tree to exist in the first place........ It gets complicated.
(P.S. It's jizzmag that has all the wank stuff in it.)
"Firstly all coal is bio-coal by definition "
Fair enough.
"It does not refer to putting in the same amount of carbon that the original biomass (allegedly) took out."
Why not? Sounds neutral to me; the nett change of C in the atmosphere is zero. Also, "allegedly"? What are plants made of where you live?
They've called it "Project 130". i.e. We want to make this thing go at 130 miles an hour.
What are the chances there's an academic behind all this with a healthy but misplaced obsession with steamtrains? His senior university job has given him some influence he's found he can twist into a subsidised steamtrain-restoration club.
I really ike the fact that people restore / recreate and run these things - but to do so in the name of efficiency, speed and the environment? Bollocks.
On the fuel conversion process: it may well be self-sustaining, but so it leaving your car idling all night. You chuck away half the energy you could have made use of.
There are several problems with high speed steam engines of the traditional sort, including the "hammer-blow" on the track from the rotating balance weights needed by the reciprocating mechanism. I doubt they'll be able to find a line in the USA on which they will be able to run a steam locomotive at that planned speed.
There was research in the late Seventies on "fluidized bed furnaces" and some paper designs were produced for locomotives. There was one with a Garratt layout that used steam condensers, and a few patents were issued. These days, turbo-electric transmission might be usable. There has also been a lot of development in boiler technology and operation since the 1950s.
Putting it bluntly, this all looks like a dead end. At best, it will be a solid base for comparing the fuels, because of old data on the locomotive class, burning coal.
Try looking here http://www.5at.co.uk/
There are several areas where 'Advanced' steam has been taken well beyond where British main-line steam ended in the 1960's (and most of North American steam locomotion several decades before that).
Having said that, I think that there are too many obstacles relating to infrastructure (water supply for one) and maintenance that would make a return to steam non-viable in the 21st Century as a front line method of mainline traction.
And the I.T. angle is ... ?
The optimal way would be to do the equivalent of a CCGT power station. Blow coal dust into a compressed airflow and ignite it on a continuous basis and run it through a turbine, and then through a secondary steam cycle.
BUT the point remains, why bother?. Better to drive a genny in a fixed plant and use leccy locos instead.
Unless its an in-service mainline locomotive with its 7 coaches, the record will not be recognised by Guinness. Mallard was a streamlined loco, no matter what Biofuel in the boiler the steam pressure required is very difficult to achieve for an external piston design....I think the record is safe probably for another century....that said if someone tried to create a Steam turbine, now that possibly could get the record.
Having been on the foot plate of a Ja class loco in NZ, going down a slight gradient at an indicated 70mph I would not want to be there at 130mph. 70mph was like the gates of hell, noise, fire, smoke, swaying (we only have narrow gauge). I only really enjoyed it because I was well primed with alcohol. I think the driver was as well.
Is more brute force than anything else.
There were many improvements to stem engine design after this loco was built. Most of those came in Europe. Improvements to chimney and blastpipe design. Radical changes to the valve gear. etc etc
If you have ever travelled behind BR 71000 Duke Of Gloucester over the Settle & Carslile you will know what I mean. Going from a standing start in Appleby(going south) to 70mph with 12 Mk 1 coaches behind it and climbing all the time up to Dent box was a real pleasure.
If I were thinking of doing this then just about the last engine I'd start with would be one of these. A NYC 4-8-4 Streamliner perhaps. They could easily top 100mph in service even with crap W. Virginia coal.(crap when compared to S. Wales Anthracite that is)
Ok, mines the one with a Greasetop in the pocket.
Going by some freely available data
Mallard, 158 kN on 167 tonnes (with tender) - 0.95 kN/tonne
Milwaukee Road class F6 4-6-4 203 kN on 241 tonnes - 0.84 kN/tonne
(streamlined) F7 class 4-6-4 - 224 kN on 360 tonne - 0.64 kN/tonne
Not sure if that shows anything other than aerodynamics is important.
It seems that the loco in question is a ATSF 3460 class
Tractive effort - 220 kN
Weight with tender - 323 tonnes
0.68 kN per tonne
What may account for the difference is the tender weight, for a long journey a large tender and large coal and water supply is required
recalculating "output" excluding tender weight
Mallard - 1.45 kN/tonne
ATSF 3460 - 1.17 kN/tonne
A nationwide 'Electric Train' system in the US? Who are you kidding?
There is only one part of the US Mainline network that has electic trains and that is the Washington DC, New york, Boston corridor and not all of that is electified. Even that was threatened with being switched off not all that many years ago.
Raising the idea of stringing Catenary across the great plains is just laughable. Remember that 90%+ of all traffic on the rails is Freight not passenger as in other parts of the world.
Whilst your proposal has some merit it is a non starter.
and yes, I know about the Trans Siberian but even that is not leccy all the way to Bejing.
Yes, the Turbomotive. Sadly wrecked at Harrow & Wealdstone and rebuilt as a standard piston type. If you go through Harrow & Wealdtone, you can see the over-bridge is not riveted in the centre section where it had to be rebuilt after the crash. A mess that was.
I can't see this project hitting its goals, though.
Actually no. It was the other way round. The Turbomotive (LMS 6202, BR 46202) was first rebuilt as a conventional locomotive and was then wrecked in the crash at Harrow and Wealdstone.in 1952.
It is widely understood that the loss of 46202 (named 'Princess Anne') led to the decision that one class 8P locomotive could be added to the Riddles designed BR standard programme. And so Duke of Gloucester (71000) was authorised. Many debates on how effective and efficient 71000 was in its BR form and post preservation a number of flaws in the original build have been addressed - or not depending on your bias / point of view.
OK, so it depends upon the coal your burning, and this explains some of the differences between the loco designs between the 4 grouping in the UK's steam hey day. But the amount of energy released from burning the off gassed volatiles normally exceeds the energy released from the burning of the bulk carbon of the coal. It is also easier to exploit since the combustion can occur high in the fire box or better still inside the fire tubes running through the boiler, which is actually where you need it.
Modern control systems might well allow you to get around some of the big bug bears of external combustions engines, the need to get the fuel into the fire 5+ minutes before it will be needed. In the past it was down to the skill of the driver and most especially the fireman, to know just when to feed the inferno so that it would be ready for the next section of the line. That should be possible to automate now.
But as others have pointed out, making a steam engine expire the Mallards run is going to be very difficult. Gressley wasn't exactly hot on the concept of elf'N'safety. Let's face it Stanier would let the LMS have a go at the record, and went ape when they did run Coronation upto 114MPH near Crewe, having forgotten the upcoming set of points!
Not be restricted by the UK loading gauge would allow much larger driven wheels, but you are still going to have massive reciprocating forces. The pistons and conrods are huge and so consequently weighty. The baring are going to be taking a massive loading.
As Chris says, a turbine such as Turbomotive is a much better approach.
This will still leave huge technical challenges.
Mines the one with the burn whole from the cinders and a copy of the Engineman's handbook in the pocket.
I would use a turbine instead of pistons. For spead: direct mechanical connection to drive wheels, through a gearbox, but for every-day practicality: Let the turbine run a generator.
Secondly, I would use a steam-generator rather than a boiler, much lighter and cheaper to maintain. Reacts quicker too. Fuel in the form of coal-dust, fed into a blower.
Waste steam fed into condensers.
No reason why this couldn't be made to be both reliable and cheap-ish to run.
Much easier and efficient to burn the 'coal' to produce electricity and then run the trains on that.
Steam trains are exceptionally heavy and complicated, in comparison electric trains are very light and simple to maintain, not to mention there are loads of them already operating.
There are many problems with this idea. Firstly, and something nobody else has mentioned, is the fact that for reciprocating steam engines, the available horsepower increases linearly with speed, thus full horsepower is only generated at top speed, and at low speed, little power is produced. Contrast that with a diesel or electric, where full power is available pretty much over the entire speed range. This was one of the reasons why the Yanks moved to diesel so early on.
The other problem is of thermal efficiency; no matter how well you lag the boiler and take other measures, it'll still be horrendously inefficient compared to diesel or electric. And as others have mentioned, the lack of steam-based lineside infrastructure such as water columns and the like, as well as huge maintenance bills for the locos themselves. Hammer blow isn't much of a problem these days. When Tornado was tested on the Great Central Railway, it was found to have much *less* adverse effect on the track than the Mk1s it was towing!
This is a complete non-starter and has the fingers of non-engineers all over it.
"This ... has the fingers of non-engineers all over it."
On the opposite - it is practically covered with fingerprints of engineers eager to get their hands on a reasonably preserved engine and coming up with whatever they think is a sure tag-line to get the funding required for the restoration.
I was under the impression that in fact nearly full horsepower is available at a standing start, which is why a 24hp traction engine can happily drag a sports car backwards up a road. There is an issue of where the pistons are when the throttle opens, but even so I think you may be overstating the issue.
Maintenance was an issue and I doubt that steam will ever be as low cost as electric in that department but modern burners and fuels can drastically reduce costs compared to 1965 and computer control has the potential to make a substantial impact on things like startup time and eliminate the need for a fireman (already largely superseded by automatic systems on the old Pacific Bigboys IIRC) .
Infrastructure is a huge issue for locos and one of the biggest is the lack of turntables. Water isn't actually that bad a problem with fire hydrants in pretty well every major mainline station on the network, but there's hardly any turntables left in the UK at all.
Most high powers recorded by steam locos is not at full speed, but at full valve gear open and medium speeds.
This was the technique the S&D drivers developed to leave behind banking engines, yes a passenger train with large loco can accellerate quicker than a light little engine. Read reports of 3000 EDHP
You seem to be confusing a few measures of power there.
Top horsepower only available at top speed is not really suprising. The definition of horsepower is work done over time. Thus faster speed/higher axle rpm means higher horsepower at the same torque output.
By definition, peak torque on a steam locomotive is at standing start, with no cutoff. Once speed picks up, the cutoff is raised to save on steam usage. Due to the nature of steam (expansion and such things), peak torque normally remains relatively stable near the max output over the entire speed-range. Thus horsepower HAS to rise as speed builds. This is all due to definition.
If you say all horsepower is available at a standing start in a diesel, you'd be right, but also wrong. The engine is not directly coupled to the wheels and can thus run at optimum speed to produce peak horsepower or peak torque (depending on whats needed). This means it can output its maximum power at all times at any speed. The power to the wheels is however delivered by the drive motors. Which follow that pesky work over time definition with torque and rpm relations.
The majority of the UK's steam locos came from a scrapyard in Wales, where they'd only been left unused for not a great number of years. The description that this one has been stabilised sounds like it's a rusting hulk not far from collapsing into a pile of rust, it's not even been cosmetically cared for. Engines like that were not built for speed but to haul heavy loads.
Possibly the best one to try for the record is somewhat newer - may we suggest our own "Tornado"?
Tornado FTW: it would probably have a far better chance than a restored Mallard as far as re-capturing a record. But the other posters are surely correct: that 3463 thing has about the same chance of beating 126mph as $HEAVYWEIGHT_BOXER has of winning the 100m at the Olympics. (Look at http://www.a1steam.com/ if you don't know what Tornado is. Having been on the platform at Edinbrugh Waverley to see it start with a full rake of coaches, I was left rather deaf and blubbing like a girl.)
Another thing that various other posters are correct about is the efficiency. The thermodynamic efficiency of steam locomotives is pants. You can do MUCH better in a power station because you have the space to condense the steam rather than blasting it up the funnel. You get the suck as well as the blow. And you only lose a small fraction of your gains in transmitting the power to an electric loco and converting it into mechanical energy when it gets there.
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With an electric loco you don't need to stop every now and then for clean water (which also might or might not become a precious ressource soon enough).
Although I guess you _could_ use a condenser design I suppose, but you'd need to work on the design a bit, I seem to recall that existing models are not terribly efficient.
Although I can see how biocoal could be made to match or beat diesel, I really doubt it can ever even see the like of the MagLev and the TGV from down there.
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