From reading a little more about clean coal, I understand that the term refers to a general objective of cleaner coal combustion. I suppose the ultimate achievement in clean coal would be coal combustion that produced no emissions whatsoever, but we are a long way from that objective in a commercial application. However, even if that objective were met, I suspect that the anti-coal movement would not be satisfied with it, because generelly their grievance extends to the mining of coal and possible dangers of CO2 equestration, in addition to the combustion emissions.

Here is an example of that line of thinking:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03390.html

The debate of coal has shifted over the years, but is hardly new. In 1915, the nation’s largest scientific study of air pollution was published as Smoke Abatement and the Electrification of Railway Terminals in Chicago. The 1177 page report distilled several years’ work by engineers. The 300+ boxes of source material they collected are preserved at the Illinois Railway Museum. Initially the study focused on particulate matter, in part because the committee was chaired by printer T.E. Donnelley, whose business had quality control issues from soot. Gaseous emissions, however, were also studied.

As the title of the study indicates, it was assumed that the railways were the demons. People could see locomotive smoke in all parts of the city. It was also well known that most existing boiler appliances for to increase fuel economy and deduce smoke were too heavy for locomotive application. The surprise conclusion of the scientific study, however, was that locomotives were not much of a problem. Regarding particulate matter, dust from unpaved streets was the major source, followed by building construction sites. Locomotives accounted for only 11% of combustion gases in the atmosphere. At the time, home heating plants created more of a problems than the railroads, but the public continued to vilify big industry while they ignored the devils in their basements.

Despite the scientific results, the public clamored for reform. Only the Illinois Central was forced to electrify its commuter service, but there were decades of hearings, protests and litigation. We can expect no less from today’s politics. Today a valid case could be made for increased U.S. coal consumption if the related combustion technology and emission controls were vastly improved. For example, if efficient electric high speed and commuter trains replaced gasoline autos and airplanes, carbon releases may fall. If history is a guide, however, the power and coal industries will be crucified while the public demands $3 gasoline.

Or we could start doing something with all those heavy electrics we saved...oh, wait, we didn't save them. Just GG1s.

Anyway, rather than get worked up from comments on this list from people that are too biased for anyone's good (the brainwashing works for Air America just as it does for Rush) - how about figuring out what to do when the coal runs out?

As you could probably tell, I am an electric sort of guy, so my knowledge of steam locomotives is limited. Is it possible to produce some sort of coal substitute from biomass (McDonalds grease, anyone?) that will actually work well in our steamers - without having to modify the locomotives? There has been synthetic coal in the past, but it seems to be not what we would be looking for. And I would not like to see emissions controls in order to make the stuff work, as that is not "preservation".

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Will

Will-

I'm sure reasonable substitutes can be devised if/when it becomes necessary. Steam locomotives have been successfully fired with every solid fuel imaginable from coffee beans to Egyptian mummies. Wood can be mechanically ground ("hogged") into convenient-sized pieces for hand or stoker firing. Other solid waste materials such as saw dust have been "pelletized" for firing stationary boilers.

Some modifications would no doubt be required (and/or desired), but nothing insurmountable. Also see thread elsewhere here about recent visit to the GCR.

Rather than moan about the "coal issue" as we seem to be doing - maybe it would be more productive to actually devise some sort of synth coal.

Sure, a steamer could (and have) work on many different fuels, but it seems to me that to keep everyone happy (hardcore preservationists, railfans, museum folk, environmentalists, old tech geeks, the ticket-buying public) a fuel that is clean, green, and also can run on an unmodified locomotive without corrosion or some "gumming up the works" is the key. Modification is not good, as one of the big ideas behind railroad preservation* is the technology itself, and respecting the work the mechanical engineers did at their desks back in the old days.

* I hope, anyway. Often enough I see way too many modifications just so the "train looks pretty".

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Will

"Successfully"?!? I beg to differ. In every case of such unorthodox fuel I've ever seen, the fuel was burned either out of a dire shortage of proper alternatives and/or a dire surplus of the fuel burned (the other classics were dried fish, during a coal shortage in Soviet Turkestan in 1919, and llama dung on two locos in Chile.....)



Face a fact: although coal and oil are, in planetary terms, too valuable as petrochemical sources to ever set a match to, any serious synthetic alternative to coal will cost more than coal does to manufacture, plus consume more energy to produce than it will save over coal/oil. As an example, I looked up petroleum coke, which a power plant of my acquaintance used to occasionally pick up on the spot market to supplement its anthracite/ bituminous coal blend. It appears that petro coke has too much sulfur to consider as a "green" alternative to coal........

Petro coke is that stuff left at the bottom of the refining process of oil. It is still a fossil fuel. As for the sulfur, all one needs is a scrubber for a few hundred million and the sulfur is gone.

A lot of the scubbers take slaked lime Ca(OH)2 and spray that in the flue gas. What comes out is water and CaSO4 calcium sulfate, aka gypsum wall board.

Now do you have the story of them burning fish in steam locomotives? That sounds like quite the waste.

Adam

I would say that... of the serious challenges the future will present to American operators of steam locomotives... fuel is the least of them.

Looks like the protest linked in the original post wasn't too successful:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03 ... -snowfall/

Thanks for posting that link. I particularly appreciated the writer's last sentence where he observes that pneumonia kills about twice as many people each year as the protesters claim that the burning of coal does.

PC

I agree, and in addition it is a real possibility that coal will not be available within 50 years - and I sure hope we plan to still have a few locomotives working in that time. We have already beat to death a possible political reason (no more, please!), but there are others. We may be way off in our estimates of the amount of mineable coal reserves, or we may be way off in our estimates of future usage (we as humans normally are). We may also see coal simply go obsolete from the advance of other technologies - perhaps if PV cells get down to a buck a square foot with high efficiency, or if fusion power finally breaks even. Technology can march pretty far in 50 years.

I am thinking perhaps something that may not be economical or useful for large scale use, but good for tiny market that we are. Who knows - maybe we may find some sort of fauxcoal that is reasonable to make and use from waste products, but the power plants would reject for some reason (energy density maybe? odor? economics?). It might be good to contact the chemistry departments at various universities to sick some grad students on. The death of coal will come at some point in the distant future, so why put off finding a solution?

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Will

I had forgotten about this, but there is a technical paper titled "Review of Carbon Neutral Fuels with Potential for Use in Modern Steam Locomotives" on the 5AT website at:

http://www.5at.co.uk/Carbon_neutral-fuels_10.pdf

Pretty interesting stuff. Both liquid and solid fuels are evaluated.

Thanks for the report. That is what I am looking for.

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Will

Here's a link to one organization. I don't know if their agenda includes railroads in any way.

http://www.RepowerAmerica.org