I have a physicist/engineer friend whom most people who hear him would characterize as somewhere to the "right" of Ronald Reagan insofar as his skepticism of our ability to "do anything" about global warming--oops, now the term is "climate change"--his politics, etc., and then he shocks you with the following: "In a global sense, oil and coal are far too valuable as petrochemical resources to ever set a match to, but we've gotten addicted to its ability to power transportation." He advocates nuclear power--"its problems are compact and containable, unlike procuring and burning fossil fuels."



I know a few people who are into the alt-car crazes, building their own electric cars and installing their own biodiesel refineries in their houses. (One of the latter is a lawyer putting his big bucks where his mouth is.) The biodiesel guys report that, all of a sudden, the places that used to be happy to let them take drums of used fryer oil are balking, holding out for the highest bidders. What used to be "free" now costs them. And this is at a stage where biodiesel is still considered an experimental anachronism, not mainstream. The fact is that, stereotypes about our "fast food nation" aside, we simply don't produce enough waste vegetable oil to power our nation, unless we redefine part of our national energy policy as killing everyone with clogged arteries and cardiac arrest by age 40 by mandating greasy fried food.

Can biomass briquettes replace our coal needs and, further, help power our transportation? It's a possibility. Unfortunately, some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that unless some magic miracle plant that grows like bamboo and kudzu and packs the density of hickory is created, the United States alone will be reduced to routinely bulldozing an area the size of the Amazon rain forest in ten-yesr cycles. And then we haven't discussed China, or India, or Russia, or Australia, or Africa, or Brazil, or Europe, or......

Hemp.

That's because the only solution is a complex synergy of solutions. Hybrids are popular because the combine electric storage and fossil fuel, each used in its best application but compromised to some extent - that hurts much less than helps - by being combined.

OT biomass coal certainly can potentially be A PART of the package, but nothing will be so much the total package as oil - in its current cheap subsidized condition, has been and still mostly is.

WE may see feight hauled across the country partly by wood, partly by falling water, parly by nuclear, partly by combustion of liquid fuels whether inside our outside of the cylinder, got out of the ground or squeezed out of plants, or grown by algae, dependent on what works best over each specific part of the trip.

I don't see any steam locomotive that looks like clalssical steam being as likely a part of the mix as something that has lots of small cyliunders and controlled expansion, evaporative medium (water or not)recycled, and highly engineered automated combustion control.

dave

And I would add to Dave's comments that part of our solution is going to be driving less, and riding trains and trolley cars more. Transportation is something like 50 to 60 percent of oil demand in this country, and motor fuel is on the order of two-thirds of that. That highway system is our Achilles heel, and we need to de-emphasize it a bit. Of course, good trains will help there, and be nicer to ride besides. Driving has become such a chore--who do you know has taken Sunday leisure drives lately, even before gas became as expensive as it is now?

Looking up at Paul's and Alexander's comments, my brain cells got tickled, and I remembered something, something about a railroad in Africa that had groves of fast-growing eucaliptus trees as its fuel supply for its wood-fired locomotives. It wasn't a really heavily trafficked road to be sure, but it did have a perpetual fuel supply available, and in modern terms, it was carbon-neutral. It may have been a secondary route in South Africa, or it may have been further north, perhaps on the Gold Coast. Does anybody remember anything of such a road, which was running steam into the 1970s?

Yes, I remember that. A quick search identified it as the Benguela Railway in Angola. IIRC they had some fairly modern steam too, including Beyer Garratts with Giesl ejector exhausts.

Ing. Porta did quite a bit of research into the idea of sustainable wood-fired steam and identified suitable fast-growing trees (maybe better than eucalyptus) that could be used. He did quite a bit of work with wood-fired steam in Paraguay, including the modernization of one British-built 2-6-0.

I'm interested to see how this man-made "bio-coal" compares to just burning wood. I'd assume the fuel produced has higher energy density than wood, and the apparently uniform size of the "pucks" would simplify mechanical firing arrangements. It may be based on other plant material besides wood as well.

Well that would be incorrect. There is a process already available that extracts oil from coal. What is left is a very, very clean burning coal byproduct. The only problem is at the moment, it's more expensive to use this method than to just drill for oil. Give it time, at one point the common calculator cost $300.

"Yes, I remember that. A quick search identified it as the Benguela Railway in Angola. IIRC they had some fairly modern steam too, including Beyer Garratts with Giesl ejector exhausts."--W. H. Odom

Thanks for the name, that gave me something to look with:

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/africa.htm#Angola

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/angola01.htm

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/angola02.htm

http://users.powernet.co.uk/hamilton/survivors.html

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/tal ... ales01.htm

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/tal ... ales02.htm

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/tal ... ales03.htm

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/tal ... ales04.htm

Hard to believe something this large is a wood-burner:

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/art ... t09031.jpg

Wooding up:

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/art ... t09030.jpg

Again, great thanks to the people who take these photos, sometimes at personal risk, and then again thanks to them and others for sharing.

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/internat.htm

I have been watching this thread all the way through so far and find it very interesting. The development of alternative fuel sources and the advantages that they have. What I have been more interested in is ways that locomotives that have been or may be in service in the future can benefit from the addition of new technology. Consider how the diesel locomotive has changed and evolved since it replaced steam, how might steam have progressed had it stayed in use.

Consider that NYC used 5344 as their test bed Hudson. All the advancements and improvements that were made to the other classes and later model Hudsons were first tested on 5344. The things that may/will be learned and proven on this project could very well be applied to other locomotives and make their operation more efficient and
profitable. So as various parts of the locomotive are made more efficient how much total efficiency can be gained?

I am sure that pilots at the end of WWII never could have imagined the fly by wire systems on airplanes, now that is common. In what ways could modern computer technology be applied to a steam locomotive? How could this be used to increase bottom line for museums and tourist operations, while at the same time being hi-tech and the customer still sees and experiences the same vintage product?

How many steamers still exist even in parks or museums? thousands?

How many steamers have been preserved and historicaly restored? Hundreds running in to thousands

How many steamers have been or atempts made od to modernise them? tens

How many steamers have been made to burn renewable fuels eficently with modern technology and have a chance of still running when the fuel criss gets worse and enviromental pressures like carbon tax? maybe can be counted on the fingures of one of you hands.

So to use just one loco in this way is a small price to pay to keep steam living?

Is its true that alone this one project is not enough by a vast amount in many ways but it is a chance not to be ignored if it keeps steam runing?
Why would it not look similar to what it already dose? The Red devil looked just like its class 25 mates when it was black!
There would be no reason to convert it back when the work is proven as it would be destroying history as it would not be preserving its modernised form, DONT LOOK BACK just forward.

Locos on Veggie oil... done that got the T shirt, You can turn most bio matter into liquid fuels and then burn them in a firebox!!!!!!!!!!!

The solution is diversification of energy sorces not relying on one.

I enjoy steam as much as the next guy, but nobody has answered a couple of crucial questions.

1) Where do you get all the trees to make into hockey pucks? I'm from Seattle, so I can tell you, from first hand knowledge that logging ranks right up there with coal mining on the "Top 10 ways to rape, pillage and plunder the planet" chapter in the eco handbook.

2) This is all about efficiency and saving energy right? So does anyone think there's a polar ice cap's chance in the Sahara Desert that this thing is more efficient than burning the hockey pucks in a lineside power plant and powering the trains by electricity? For that matter, why not burn the pucks where you make them, and save the entire carbon footprint of transporting them?

The plant could have better efficiency and better anti-pollution measures. Creating a portable boiler (aka locomotive) and hauling your fuel and water around isn't a very eco friendly way of doing things.

It's better on the railroad end of things as well. Those commuter trains can now have powered axles on each car, so they're fast, efficient and you have exactly the right "locomotive", whether the train is 2 cars or 20 cars.

You also gain the ability to recover power through regenerative braking on the downgrades, saving even more energy.

So, while I'd love to see a Streamlined Hudson hauling the "21st Century Limited", I'm still waiting for somebody to tell me, with a straight face, that this proposal is more cost and energy effective than going electric.

Possibly on remote lines and lightly used branches, I could see it there. But generally speaking, I just don't think it's viable.

If you do pull it off, let me know... I can find you quite a few out of work loggers... err I mean bio-fuel harvesting specialists... that would be happy to go back to work.

“Torrefied biomass” sounds like charcoal to me. Kingsford's been doing that for nearly a century.

This is not about a more cost effective approach to transportation. The reasoning behind this proposal has never been a factor in any industrial development prior to this current era of the last few years. We have just arrived at the point in history where CO2 is deemed to be a pollutant. So we either have to capture and sequester it if we emit it; or we simply must not emit it. Either way, it raises the cost of doing business.

So the question is this: How much more do we, as a society, want to spend in order to achieve carbon neutral transportation? The same question applies to electric power and domestic heating of buildings. If we do not want to spend the full cost of meeting the objective with what we use, then the only option will be to use less.

This type of fuel can be used as a substitute for coal-fired power plants...so, great idea to try it in a steam locomotive!

Stephen

The website claims it is different from charcoal:

"Torrefied biomass is the most efficient biofuel available today. By recycling excess gas produced during the torrefaction reaction to intensify the process, we are able to achieve 96-98% thermal efficiency. As a point of comparison, the thermal efficiency of charcoal production is 20-40% and the production of biodiesel is actually negative."