ACE 3000 - is the time now right?

[tpatrick]

Oil prices are high and not likely to fall anytime soon largely due to the increasing need of the growing Chinese economy for fuel. Americans worry about our continuing dependence for foreign oil. Railroads are our largest consumer of diesel fuel. So is the time right to dust off Ross Rowland's ACE 3000 and return the rails to much cheaper and more plentiful domestic coal? Does homeland security now tip the scales in the argument? Whaddaya think? Check The Ultimate Steam Page for more information.

[Anonymous]

I have to agree!
BNSFrailfan.

[Anonymous]

While I did crow about steam on some other threads, I did recently catch a whiff of something about diesel engines returning to coal slurry, a fuel that they burned before diesel fuel as we know it today was developed.

Coal slurry is powdered coal mixed with water.

One of the main problems with coal is that it has a lot of sulfer, which as a combustion byproduct is not very good for the environment.

If you can get the sulfer out, right on.

[wallyworld]

The short answer is yes. Our federal government regardless of party has done a poor job in making a reasonable attempt to develop alternative fuels for motive power. It is long overdue.
Our institutions seem to have a bad habit of forestalling the building of lifeboats until the ship is listing hard to port.
Without the prudent infusion of federal funds to replace dinosaur poop, sooner rather than later, we will be living once again in a world of very expensive, rationed gasoline whose supply will be prioritized according to national interest.
We spend billions on a space station with no apparent purpose, but consists that move vital materials still can’t move one foot forward without oil.
Its absurd and very risky to place all of our respective eggs in one very fragile and dependant basket. Unfortunately, they will only take this seriously when all of us have finally had enough of this nonsense and speak up.

[tpatrick]

JRuppert, the Ultimate Steam Page, in the paragraph titled " ACE3000 Dash 8," refers to "fluidized bed combustion (which can cleanly burn high sulfur coal)." I don't know what the process is, but it sounds like an external combustion steamer may be able to burn coal cleaner than the diesel slurry burner. That's a guess and I am out on a limb with it, but maybe someone out there knows more about it and will tell us the facts. Somebody call Ross Rowland or Bill Withuhn for some input here!

[espeefoamer]

When the ACE 3000 was first proposed,I thought to myself,"This is what happens when foamers have money".It is every railfans fantasy for steam to come back,but it is as likely to happen as the government shutting down the airlines(the biggest user of fossil fuel) and telling everyone to "Next time take the train".

[wallyworld]

Link to interesting article on Coal to diesel oil pilot plant

http://www.courier-journal.com/business/news2004/07/29/D3-coal29-5476.html

[locomutt]

QUOTE: Originally posted by wallyworld

Link to interesting article on Coal to diesel oil pilot plant

http://www.courier-journal.com/business/news2004/07/29/D3-coal29-5476.html

That was an interesting article. CW & I have the C-J delivered daily,
but for some reason,I missed that one.[:(]

[TrainFreak409]

I would like to see the ACE 3000 become a reality.

But, back to coal to oil. There are multiple plans for conversion plants. The other day, in the Carroll County Times, they had a small article about a man in Pennsylvania who wants to build one.

[8]TrainFreak409[8]

[Paul Milenkovic]

About synthetic Diesel being cheaper than bringing back the steam locomotive, the whole point of the ACE 3000 is that while the thermal efficiency of the steamer will never equal the Diesel, the fuel is so much cheaper that the steamer has a lower fuel cost than the Diesel, let alone the Diesel run on synthetic oil, made from coal or otherwise.

The low fuel cost of the steam loco is arguable. I talked to a fellow who runs live steam for an amusement park, and he uses a fairly expensive grade of coal because it is a tradeoff with smoke emissions and higher maintenance costs.

But the notion of Diesel fuel costs is not strictly academic. The rail tariff is the biggest chunk of the cost of Wyoming coal served up to a Midwest power plant -- more than the mine royalties and the mining cost by far. A big chunk of the rail cost is fuel, almost suggesting that some non-trivial percentage of coal-generated electricity is attributable to burning Diesel fuel in locomotives. You would think that coal-generated electricity is a non-oil energy source but it turns out it isn't.

Then the question is whether to go with the ACE 3000, which is essentialy the Stephenson steam locomotive, or something more exotic, steam-turbine electric after the Jawn Henry. I used to be in the Jawn Henry camp, but I am beginning to think that a steam-turbine power plant belongs on the ground instead of in the locomotive and if you want steam-turbine power you should string wires and go electric. I wonder if they could string wires over some strategic ruling grades for the Wyoming coal, use dual-mode electric-Diesel locos, and use regenerative braking on the downhill to power trains on the uphill to save energy.

If you are going to go the route of steam, I am beginning to think that instead of building the ACE 3000 where some designer thinks they are going to set everything right that was done wrong in the heyday of steam, one should start with where people left off and make incremental improvements. How about starting with one of L. D. Porta's designs and keep tweaking it to make it better (as Porta was doing)?

But if you are stuck on the idea of the Jawn Henry, putting a whole freakin' steam-turbine power plant in a giant locomotive, perhaps you should consider that when the electric power utility industry (think railroad style management, but in many cases in charge of quantities of plutonium in the cores of their nuclear plants) finally gets their act together, they will no longer use steam turbines (directly) to generate electricity from coal.

The "future" for coal-generated electricity is to use a coal gas producer and to burn the gas in a . . . gas turbine! In a ground-based plant, they use the waste heat from the gas turbine to run a steam plant, and they get about 50 percent more electricity per pound of coal than possible with a straight steam plant. For a loco, I imagine the way to go is to feed to gas produced into gas turbines and dispense with the steam "bottoming cycle." To get around the terrible fuel wastage of the UP "Big Blows", you could use 3 sets of gas turbines -- a 1000, 2000, and 4000 kW turbine - and you could switch them on and off in steps from 1000 to 7000 kW. That is what ground-based steam (and turbine) plants do to keep operating turbines at their efficient full-power point. And for the railroad, you may not want to turn turbines on and off everytime you change a notch on the throttle, you can turn turbines on in anticipation of a big hill. And this business of how you would ruin the turbine on a Big Blow if you turned if off, jet airplanes (in the terminal) and turbine power peaking plants turn turbines on and off all the time.

[Anonymous]

The steam turbine plant of the Jawn Henry, or the C&O M-1, where huge because that was 50's technology. I propose that a steam turbine powerplant be no bigger than any current diesel electric "plant", and I am positive it can be done. And have the efficiency of a closed loop system.

[Anonymous]

I'm sure the ACE 3000 wouldn't pass Tier 2...

[locomutt]

Actually,the thought of going pure electric doesn't sound bad,
but where are they going to get the power from?

And unfortunately,the"steam turbine electrics"didn't work.

I was a big "Jawn Henry & M-1 "fan myself.

[Overmod]

The "ACE 3000"'s time will probably never come -- its horsepower was too low even in the '80s, and its adhesion... 4 powered axles out of 14? Aside from which, its supposed 'condensing' operation was a scam under real-world operating and maintenance conditions (read the description that accompanies the patent to see the language substantiating this).

IIRC there were no fundamental problems with Jawn Henry that made the locomotive irreparably unserviceable (as there certainly were with the C&O locomotives!!!) The problem with locomotive steam turbines isn't so much the road shocks as it's the buff and draft forces, particularly those resulting from slack action on coal trains; the turbines normally have their shafts aligned longitudinally in the locomotive (same alignment as in diesel-electric packaging) and (at least in the past) didn't have robust thrust bearings as nobody recognized this was going to be a problem. Doesn't take much axial movement to have the rotor blades crash into the stators, and even a short contact wrecks the efficiency of the turbine's flow...

Modern gas turbines would use ceramic construction and magnetic bearings (as in some of the current generation of microturbines). The control circuitry for mag bearings is capable of responding to any shock that can accelerate the structure on which the turbines are mounted. Modern suspensions in locomotives almost by definition should be designed to be 'kind' to track geometry, which implies low levels of shock and vibration making it through the secondary suspension to the locomotive frame.

There are proposals under way to develop solid-fuel-fired locomotives, and a number of applicable business (and political) models to get them built.

I've done some research into synthesized fuels (e.g., Fischer-Tropsch from coal) which I think represents the best overall *system* if capital is to be spent on coal energy. Note that a synthesized liquid fuel for external-combustion locomotives can be considerably cheaper (and yes, that's a relative term; dino oil is still cheaper even at $42 a barrel) than diesel #2, which is an 'engineered' fuel with respect to its chemical makeup (controlled cetane rating, good lubricosity for injection pumps, etc. etc.) This would NOT be a return to some form of Bunker C, but a light oil, probably usable as a precursor feedstock to diesel or other hydrocarbon vehicle fuel. Not really difficult to pull the sulfur out of the coal as part of the synthesis procedure... and re-sell it in quantity as a chemical.

Without violating any nondisclosure agreements: To see an interesting starting place for a modern solid-fuel steam locomotive, look at the Government test results for the TurboFire XL boiler. Then think about how to repackage this for a locomotive application. (Quiz on Thursday ;-}) Hint: is the actual boiler efficiency, measured in terms of actual steam output enthalpy, higher or lower when the NOx-reducing steam jets are turned on? It's in the descriptions. Compressed-air overfire jet proponents will not be entirely happy about this...


According to Penn State's press release, the point of JP900 fuel is that it is temperature-stable up to 900 degrees F (hence the name). Of course, the same press release indicated that the 'cloud point' of this fuel was the temperature at which a cloud formed above the liquid (so help me, it's true; see for yourself when you stop laughing...)


I have thought that the idea of 'de-energized' catenary fed with locomotive-derived power is a reasonable idea for many years. By extension, this is also a way to implement overhead-wire installation for more full electrification slowly, or in a more 'depreciable' manner. Note that there are ways to use the locomotives and catenary for other uses, particularly peak demand on 60Hz, even if the cat power is single-phase.

An important point to keep in mind regarding gas turbines vs. piston engines was made several years ago in some of the electric-power-industry press. At partial-load operation, a piston engine retains more of its 'rated' thermodynamic efficiency than does a normal turbine, and several authors mentioned that this made piston-engined peaking plants 'better' than turbine plants below a certain typical load.

I'm surprised that only one person has brought up where the 'conventional' steam locomotive is likely to have a meaningful renaissance -- in the less-developed countries, such as Cuba (where L.D. Porta was going to provide the 'biomasa'-burning 0-6-2). Motive power 'there' can be just as meaningful.