What would be the possibility of using coal tar sludge as heavy fuel for say turbines in former times? If the CTS was heated in the same manner as the UP bunker C turbine fuel I wonder if the UP8080 could have been setup to burn either CTS or Syn gas produced from coal? Gasification of coal would have been easier on the turbine blades. Gasification had been done successfully to power automobiles during WW2 in Europe.

I've always been interested in how coal slurry or coal tar sludge might have been able to be converted to low cost railway fuels in former times? Could CTS have been something a new build steam locomotive could have employed as fuel of some kind? Could've been steam turbine electric or direct drive steam cylinders like the ACE3000 project.

Robert

The Union Pacific produced their own fuels. They had their own coal mines and later had their own oil wells and refinery. I think they were targeting specific fuels that they had available from their own facilities for the turbines. I do not know when the coal mines were closed, but the oil operation was spun off as Union Pacific Resources about the same time as the merger with the SP. it did not last too long before it was purchased by Anadarko Petroleum.

The expense of further refinement of residual fuels for use uneconomical. Otherwise the residual would be processed, not residual. Only extremes such as embargoes or war force the use of residuals where they would otherwise be troublesome. Use as furnace hog fuel in refineries and petrochemical plants is typical for these offals.

For further enlightenment :

https://www.ge.com/content/dam/gepower-pgdp/global/en_US/documents/technical/ger/ger-3764a-burning-ash-heavy-fuels-heavy-duty-gas-turbines.pdf

https://shipfever.com/effects-of-poor-residual-fuel-on-marine-engine/

https://www.gessa.co.za/product-range/

Coal tar sludge is an interesting material, but likely NOT a reasonable alternative fuel. Much of it is apparently coal and coke carryover, the former still logically containing ash content; most methods of removing the sludge, let alone utilize it as a fuel, involve one or more solvent processes, which add cost and either involve considerable extraction (to produce a workable solid fuel) or removal of particulate content (to produce a workable, possibly more expensive than waste oil, liquid fuel). Yes, you could make an analogue of coal-slurry fuel out of coal-tar sludge, but you'd have to be very careful with process details to make it work. (See patent 4455148 for an alternative as well as reasonable discussion of scope.)

Of course, modern technology has leap-frogged over all these topics. We are on target to complete replacement of fossil fuels with wind, solar, and hydro. Battery trains are now in service in the UK, and on the catalog pages of Bombardier and Siemens for future orders. I expect that all rail service in Europe will be without fossil fuels by 2030. We are operating battery buses in Copenhagen that receive their recharge at the layover at terminal stations. Battery ferries are on the order books for our remaining ferry services, that can recharge in the 15 minutes of terminal time.

The wind was so strong that in the days around Christmas, 2017, all of Denmark's electrical demand was supplied by wind energy.