Overmod
you are one who provides interesting readings. It's relieving.
though my comment about the child's car wasn't meant so earnest, it's ok to read a serious comment that's worth reading.
I've heard about that battery regenerating thing, over here the ADAC published a means to get "dead" batteries back to like. The battery industry rebuked the club and they have kept quiet since.
Pat Metheny - To the end of the world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gm7L3LEyz8
in spite of the title: nice relaxing music (lasts one hour, you see we still have time ..)
0S5A0R0A3
There is a difference -- with often fascinating technical wisdom built up over the years -- in restoring 'lost battery capacity' vs. remanufacturing batteries by taking out dead or failed cells selectively to reuse the good ones. I strongly suspect there is little way to get lithium cells themselves that have actually gone bad to go back to holding good charge, so there may not be analogues to desulfating typical constructions using lead-acid chemistry.
The two interestingly-different approaches are rebuilding the actual battery strings so that they develop proper "DC-link voltage" for a locomotive application (say ~1500V vs. typical 312 or so), and making use of cells with diminished capacity intentionally, not caring that their charge capacity is lower but controlling them so further degradation is reduced. Apparently RPS is doing both, which increases the amount of each "battery" they reprocess vs. what has to be scrapped and chemically recovered.
One "rag" that I use as a starting point is "Electronic Design", which is a shadow of what it was twenty years ago. OTOH, since it is supposed to be serving people in the industry, the correspondents tend to be more careful with their writing and will often note the odor of male bovine excrement in press releases. One example of the latter was Lee Goldberg expressing skepticism about the nuclear diamond battery.
The articles will usually have links to the organization that put out the press release, which allows for further evaluation of the claims. The ultimate evaluation comes from real products with real data sheets and reports of real world experience.
One example of something that progressed from a press release to real world product was the Zinc-air battery. The selling point was a high specific energy, though not much was said about specfic power. The technology has come to dominate the market for hearing aid batteries - but don't think they will show up as the power source for locomotives.
Overmod To this day I can't read some of McPhee's accounts of the goings-on at West Valley without cringing.
To this day I can't read some of McPhee's accounts of the goings-on at West Valley without cringing.
Re-processing in the US came to a stop during the Carter adminstration, though there has been an intriguing concept to use spent fuel as a feed source for a molten salt reactor. The latter would keep the Pu on-site, which would also make the Pu even worse for weapons.
While the AEC/ERDA/DOE has shown that reactor grade Pu can be used to make a weapon, it does involve a bit more skill than using weapons grade Pu. Other complicating factor is that 241Pu has a relatively short half life, which would require more frequent reprocessing.
The biggest problems we here in the USA has with Nuclear power are these 4 things. 1st we do not allow reproccessing the spent fuel rods they must all go into spent fuel storage. Less than half of fuel in a rod is used for power production before it is removed from the reactor and then it has to be put into storage. Allowing spent fuel rods to be reproccessed into new fuel rods would allow save Billions for the power companies alone in storage and fuel costs. 2 the fight to get our Yucca Mountain storage site open. It has been what 20+ years that it was supposed to be open now and still has yet to be opened thanks to all the delays in court. 3rd no new construction since 1979 after 3 Mile Island. After that incendent in which no material escaped the containment building there has not been a NEW nuclear power plant for commerical power built. Yet the Navy has commisioned close to 100 nuclear powered ships without a problem. 4th is the freaking REGULATIONS in this nation. My boss does haul into the local nuclear plant delivering supplies to them. The amount of paperwork I have to deal with just for the delivery at times is enough to make me want to drink a fifth of Jack at times. Dealing with the Defense Department is nothing compared to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency I swear. When we haul in a load of chemicals into that plant which we do from time to time the paperwork we have to supply from the driver's background to the maintance history on the trailer the water quality for the washout down the smallest detail that if it is not correct they will refuse to even let the freaking load get unloaded. There is another plant and carrier that hauls replacement pipes for the local plants I saw one of their BOL's for the local plant once. It was 22 freaking pages thick for a 3 foot section of pipe for the NON radioactive side. I asked the driver as I was delivering the paperwork for a load coming out that day what one was like for the hot side. He goes I need a 3 inch binder for it.
Shadow the Cats owner3rd no new construction since 1979 after 3 Mile Island. After that incendent in which no material escaped the containment building there has not been a NEW nuclear power plant for commerical power built.
And if you believe that....
And yeah, I do hope there's strict security regulations for anyone that has to work near/on/about a nuclear plant.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
zugmann Shadow the Cats owner 3rd no new construction since 1979 after 3 Mile Island. After that incendent in which no material escaped the containment building there has not been a NEW nuclear power plant for commerical power built. And if you believe that.... And yeah, I do hope there's strict security regulations for anyone that has to work near/on/about a nuclear plant.
Shadow the Cats owner 3rd no new construction since 1979 after 3 Mile Island. After that incendent in which no material escaped the containment building there has not been a NEW nuclear power plant for commerical power built.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Erik_Mag One "rag" that I use as a starting point is "Electronic Design", which is a shadow of what it was twenty years ago.
One "rag" that I use as a starting point is "Electronic Design", which is a shadow of what it was twenty years ago.
Are you saying that Electronic design has been ignoring grid storage technology in it's articles?
Vogtle 3&4 should be online by the end of the year.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power.aspx
rdamonVogtle 3&4 should be online by the end of the year.
YoHo1975 Erik_Mag One "rag" that I use as a starting point is "Electronic Design", which is a shadow of what it was twenty years ago. Are you saying that Electronic design has been ignoring grid storage technology in it's articles?
Not saying that at all, as they have had quite a few articles on battery technology. Emphasis is on batteries used in portable and automotive applications, which where most of the revenue is coming from. Grid storage and data center storage is still a niche market. I have not seen much on flow batteries in ED.
The comment about a shadow of what it was refers to decrease in publishing frequency, decrease in pages per issue as well as decrease in staffing. Note that EDN and EE Times have been web only for several years now.
A Tesla Model S battery is 100Kwh and weighs 1,200lbs, excluding the battery cooling system. How many of these would be required to power a modern diesel electric? Would the weight equal the weight of the Diesel engine if it was removed? And why not adding a hydrogen tank to an existing diesel electric and replacing the diesel fuel tank? Probably lessen the weight...
Just read the numbers on those plants. Those are grandfathered into the exsisting licenses for the plants already there. So that way the local NIMBY's and BANANA's can not tie them up in court for the next century while they try and get it approved. Even with the grandfathering in for these new plants it has taken 17 years to even get them built as far as they are right now. My oldest child will graduate High School before #4 at Vogtle puts one MW of power back into the grid.
Former Car Maintainer A Tesla Model S battery is 100Kwh and weighs 1,200lbs, excluding the battery cooling system. How many of these would be required to power a modern diesel electric? Would the weight equal the weight of the Diesel engine if it was removed? And why not adding a hydrogen tank to an existing diesel electric and replacing the diesel fuel tank? Probably lessen the weight...
According to google, an EMD 710 weighs 28 Short tons dry. The equivalent of 46 of those Tesla batteries.
And that's not accounting for all the Engine cooling and the fuel. Weight is ABSOLUTELY not the problem.
The existing EMD Joule weighs less than an SD7
The original OP described a long range, open freight hauling electric diesel, certainly not a "switcher" that the Joule is. Certainly interesting though, no spec is given for the Joules recharging time (out of use) or what kind of effort it can offer in its 24hour operating time. Additionally, the Joules 2.4 Mwhr capacity, equates to 24 Tesla S batteries (14 tons). Still left wondering the power requirements for a open road freight diesel and whether hydrogen tanks a better alternative..
Slow recharging might be bypassed by using exchangeable battery packs much like you exchange your propane tank for your gas grill. It would require some equipment to handle the heavy battery packs but with the proper setup it shouldn't take much more time than pumping several thousand gallons of diesel fuel.
Mark Vinski
mvlandsw Slow recharging might be bypassed by using exchangeable battery packs much like you exchange your propane tank for your gas grill. It would require some equipment to handle the heavy battery packs but with the proper setup it shouldn't take much more time than pumping several thousand gallons of diesel fuel. Mark Vinski
I am calculating that about 15 tons of fully charged batteries produces the electric output of burning about a half ton of diesel fuel -- remember the conversion of diesel fuel to electric power by way of a diesel engine turning a generator is, what, 40% efficient, at best these days?
This weight difference between modern batteries and diesel fuel in achieving a certain amount of power at the wheels, is what, roughly comparable to the weight in coal and water on a steam locomotive tender in relation to the weight of diesel fuel?
Let's see, steam locomotives required, roughly, 6 times the BTUs of a diesel or 10 times the weight in their lower-BTU-per-pound coal fuel? And one pound of coal evaporated at least 6 pounds of water? So a fully loaded tender is twice the weight of those batteries powering an electric locomotive?
So don't tell me we cannot couple a battery "tender" behind the locomotive consist? And that we couldn't switch a discharged tender in exchange for a charged tender at the interval at what used to be division points in steam days?
Or we couldn't put battery packs into 53-foot containers and exchange containers off a spine car?
Or analogous to track pans, you couldn't put up limited sections of overhead wires to recharge the batteries in motion?
Suppose with advances in batteries and with the lower maintenance of an electric locomotive and with the cost of diesel fuel, some combination of partial line electrification, battery tenders or battery containers would end up lower cost than the current system.
No siree! We are all armchair engineers and the railroads will not tolerate any deviation with current operating practices. Kind of like the railroads just absolutely, positively told us DEF was a no-can-do?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul, I believe you are correct. I'd like to hear from the other David who also worked for EMD (for a much longer period than I did) on this matter.
There are several light-rail systems and several electric-bus systems World-wide that employ the "track-pan analogy" sysgtem, with charging at terminals and station stops.
Shadow the Cats owner My oldest child will graduate High School before #4 at Vogtle puts one MW of power back into the grid.
My oldest child will graduate High School before #4 at Vogtle puts one MW of power back into the grid.
mvlandswSlow recharging might be bypassed by using exchangeable battery packs much like you exchange your propane tank for your gas grill.
Perhaps a better answer was Electric Fuel's modular zinc-air system from the turn of this century. That used the zinc-air to recharge the principal traction battery at an optimal rate, with the spent cartridges easily pulled as desired for remanufacture and replaced without deranging the traction connections. The approach also seamlessly integrates with gensets, the basic hydrogen fuel-cell recharge that has been the practical use of hydrogen in railroad service, and any intermittent-recharge scheme.
The battery-tender idea is good until you start to look at practical railroad logistics. Perhaps in an age of full autonomous operation, where the tender can drive itself to and from the cut-in point and automatics handle quick consist change, self-test, and ordering of any necessary repair, etc., this might change.
Without violating NDAs, fast recharge of locomotive strings is not a major issue.
daveklepper There are several light-rail systems and several electric-bus systems World-wide that employ the "track-pan analogy" sysgtem, with charging at terminals and station stops.
Paul MilenkovicSo don't tell me we cannot couple a battery "tender" behind the locomotive consist? And that we couldn't switch a discharged tender in exchange for a charged tender at the interval at what used to be division points in steam days?
Wasn't that a selling point of diesels? You didn't have to service them at every crew change point? And we are going to need a lot more sidings built to store these tenders on. Not an insurmountable challenge - but an expensive one.
OvermodExchangeable battery packs is an idea of great antiquity, which has never really worked anywhere it's been tried.
When i worked in a warehouse many years ago, we had forklifts with battery exchanges. Do they not do that anymore?
Former Car Maintainer The original OP described a long range, open freight hauling electric diesel, certainly not a "switcher" that the Joule is. Certainly interesting though, no spec is given for the Joules recharging time (out of use) or what kind of effort it can offer in its 24hour operating time. Additionally, the Joules 2.4 Mwhr capacity, equates to 24 Tesla S batteries (14 tons). Still left wondering the power requirements for a open road freight diesel and whether hydrogen tanks a better alternative..
Just to answer this,
You asked about battery weight and what problems that might cause. The Joule, and for that matter, the Wabtec Electric, their weight and energy capacity are relavent to your question. The Joule weighing less than an SD7 SHOULD give you a relative comparison since modern mainline locomotives are longer and heavier than that. Yes, the Joule is a switcher. A mainline locomotive would be the same thing, but bigger.
The specs on Wabtec are really light, but it states 22.5 Tonnes of energy capacity.
zugmannWhen i worked in a warehouse many years ago, we had forklifts with battery exchanges. Do they not do that anymore?
In a B2B service there wouldn't be concerns about recovering the value of the battery pack vs. the unknown quality or number of cycles (etc.) on the replacement, or the 'assured' amp-hour performance or other considerations like ohmic-heating increase with age, of the replacement. To my knowledge there were no systems that required active charge management or enhanced cooling, either: they were lead-acid or comparable strings in a rack that could be pulled out and a replacement slid in, like engines in a RDC. (Note that whether or not the main bus was a socketed slide-in connector or an explicitly bolted one is not really any more relevant than making comparable connections for a railcar engine... FADEC equipped or not.)
The thing is that I don't remember seeing one of these systems for modern warehouse practice, now that you remind me. I suspect that modern systems of controlled parallel charge between 20-80 limits is always going to be a 'better' solution than involving skilled labor and a bunch of deadhead toting of heavy batteries just to save a few minutes uptime.
OvermodWe're looking at something slightly different: exchange on the Rhino tank model, where someone pulls into a facility, the battery pack is rolled out, and a "comparable" filled one is exchanged.
I'm confused. That's what they did at the warehouse. They parked next to the charger, rolled the old battery off onto a charger, then rolled a charged one on.
zugmannI'm confused. That's what they did at the warehouse.
Somehow, I find it hard to envision the average Joe pulling into a battery station in his EV to change out the battery in a reasonable amount of time while on a road trip.
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