M636CThe Chinese haven't shown much interest in the 265H engine.
bogie_engineer Overmod As I remember the story, the Chinese locomotives had the original-design 265H engines... and there hasn't been much, if any, discussion of their having cavitation or other reported issues. Dave Goding might have considerable knowledge of some of the details. Actually I don't know how they are doing. I heard 10 years ago that there was an issue of cooling water leakage at the cylinder to block interface but don't know if that's been resolved. One of the reasons for redesigning the 265H engine to become the Tier 4 1010J was to avoid having to give the Chinese any improvements as would have been required if it stayed designated as the 265H. Dave
Overmod As I remember the story, the Chinese locomotives had the original-design 265H engines... and there hasn't been much, if any, discussion of their having cavitation or other reported issues. Dave Goding might have considerable knowledge of some of the details.
As I remember the story, the Chinese locomotives had the original-design 265H engines... and there hasn't been much, if any, discussion of their having cavitation or other reported issues. Dave Goding might have considerable knowledge of some of the details.
Actually I don't know how they are doing. I heard 10 years ago that there was an issue of cooling water leakage at the cylinder to block interface but don't know if that's been resolved. One of the reasons for redesigning the 265H engine to become the Tier 4 1010J was to avoid having to give the Chinese any improvements as would have been required if it stayed designated as the 265H.
Dave
The Chinese haven't shown much interest in the 265H engine. After the initial order of 300 locomotives, they built another 32 units. I have seen a reference to Chinese built 12-265H engines, two each in a pair of large Coast Guard patrol ships, where they might have been fairly successful.
On the other hand, the GE equivalent was much better received, and 420 more units were built after the initial 300, including a small batch of double ended locomotives. Of course the EMD units were double ended, although again a small number of single ended units were built after the intial 300. Of course the GE units had the GEVO-16, not the HDL, so the engine reliability might be expected to be better.
Peter
SD70Dude A couple questions along these lines. Have any 12 cylinder 1010J engines been sold for marine or stationary applications? Besides test engines and the sole SD89MAC prototype, were any production 12-265H engines built? Was the 3612 or C280-12 ever considered for the role the 1010J came to fill?
A couple questions along these lines.
Have any 12 cylinder 1010J engines been sold for marine or stationary applications?
Besides test engines and the sole SD89MAC prototype, were any production 12-265H engines built?
Was the 3612 or C280-12 ever considered for the role the 1010J came to fill?
AFAIK, the answer is no to all three questions. Re the 3612, I think CAT had no interest in reworking it to meet Tier 4 without SCR. CAT engineers did consult during the design of the 1010J but it was an EMD development including building a $$$ new test building in LaGrange with two test cells.
ns145 Always appreciate your input on these subjects. Besides battery electric and hydrogen powered locos, are there any other potential game changing technologies that are being mulled over by the two builders? I would think that Wabtec and EMD would love to get back to selling new locos again. USEPA might provide some assistance in that regard if their revised regs mandate Tier 4 purchases or restrict the mass rebuilding of the existing Dash 9/AC4400CW fleet.
Always appreciate your input on these subjects. Besides battery electric and hydrogen powered locos, are there any other potential game changing technologies that are being mulled over by the two builders? I would think that Wabtec and EMD would love to get back to selling new locos again. USEPA might provide some assistance in that regard if their revised regs mandate Tier 4 purchases or restrict the mass rebuilding of the existing Dash 9/AC4400CW fleet.
Thanks! The focus seems to be the battery electric locos, I am not aware of anything else. I'm anxious to see the 8-axle battery unit from EMD.
As an aside, EMD purged a number of engineering employees in September for reasons unknown to me but they were experienced people in all the engineering disciplines and they lost a lot of institutional knowledge as I see it. It seems as though CAT is slowly pulling EMD into their organization now that Billy Ainsworth is gone. With all manufacturing now gone from LaGrange, I suspect the last of EMD will leave in the not-to-distant future.
Intermediate stage report with some illustrations of the approach:
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/06/f63/ace131_mueller_2019_o_4.26_8.05pm.pdf
Original OSTI paper from 2017:
https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1372308
Note the similarity to a steam-locomotive front end in the entrainment of air in the duct; the intermediate progress report notes that higher injection pressure increases effectiveness of what is essentially better charge carburetion. On the other hand (and also as you might predict) the effect is impaired by higher charge-air boost pressure; I am also not convinced that the reduction in luminous large-particle soot (which would be a logical and expected consequence of effective reduction of droplet size during combustion) translates into lower nanoparticulates as well when the injection is phased and timed for least NOx production.
I would be interested to see this approach used for the 5% promotion injection in compression-ignition firing with natural gas.
I was wrong about comparing this with IDI, in which the actual swirl and turbulence at polynucleate ignition starts or occurs in the swirl chamber; it seems clear that the injector timing is phased so that the entrained and atomized/carbureted charge is in the cylinder (as for conventional DI) and not partly in the 'tube'.
One technique used in getting reasonably clean firing out of a DI engine with high mass flow at high boost (as from twins at 50-60psi or better) has been precise laser configuration or even contouring of the orifices in the injector tip so they flow better as divergent nozzles to better distribution in the compressed volume (including when pilot injection or multiple modulated injections are used). That would likely be both expensive and slow to utilize in commercial engine production at the scale likely to be implemented by Ford or Caterpillar, whereas the type Mr. Mueller appears to be proposing requires a simple symmetrical plume.
Overmod Have you got a reference or citation for the work? I'd like to see it, because the approach flies in the face not only of efficient compression-ignition design but also Harry Ricardo's early research in IDI engines (the Comet chamber and the importance of squish) in producing prompt injection without detonation in high-speed powerplants.
Have you got a reference or citation for the work? I'd like to see it, because the approach flies in the face not only of efficient compression-ignition design but also Harry Ricardo's early research in IDI engines (the Comet chamber and the importance of squish) in producing prompt injection without detonation in high-speed powerplants.
Let's see if I can make the link work...
https://www.machinedesign.com/mechanical-motion-systems/article/21838313/ducted-fuel-injection-cleans-up-diesel-engines
What I can make out from the article is that combustion is suppressed until there is a good mixture of fuel and air. My perhaps harebrained mental picture of combustion in an ordinary diesel engine is that the droplets burn intensely from the outside in with the high temperatures leading to coking of some of the oil in the droplet.
A sort of related factoid came up in 1979 when looking into buying a truck and converting it to run on propane. The cleanliness of propane fueled engines was attributed to the propane entering the cylinder as a gas and not as a combination of liquid and vapor.
bogie_engineer ns145 Have 16 or 20 cylinder 1010J's ever been built for non-rail applications? I would presume that the HP potential for such configurations would be pretty high relative to what the rail industry is currently using. Not to my knowledge. Until they've made the 12 cyl reliable, I wouldn't expect any others of that family to be developed. I agree with Overmod that rail applications are unlikely and CAT has the 3600 series for the big marine/industrial applications. The tooling cost for a new crankcase would be huge for any other cylinder configurations and I'd think it would have to have a lot of potential sales before CAT would approve that development. It was only due to GE developing their Tier 4 without SCR that CAT approved EMD to developed their own non-SCR solution.
ns145 Have 16 or 20 cylinder 1010J's ever been built for non-rail applications? I would presume that the HP potential for such configurations would be pretty high relative to what the rail industry is currently using.
Have 16 or 20 cylinder 1010J's ever been built for non-rail applications? I would presume that the HP potential for such configurations would be pretty high relative to what the rail industry is currently using.
Not to my knowledge. Until they've made the 12 cyl reliable, I wouldn't expect any others of that family to be developed. I agree with Overmod that rail applications are unlikely and CAT has the 3600 series for the big marine/industrial applications. The tooling cost for a new crankcase would be huge for any other cylinder configurations and I'd think it would have to have a lot of potential sales before CAT would approve that development. It was only due to GE developing their Tier 4 without SCR that CAT approved EMD to developed their own non-SCR solution.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
ns145Besides battery electric and hydrogen powered locos, are there any other potential game changing technologies that are being mulled over by the two builders?
I'd look at RPS in Fullerton rather than one of the major builders, including Siemens, for innovative approaches.
Less power, less fuel efficient and higher purchase cost. That explains all the locomotive rebuild projects in this PSR world.
ns145Have 16 or 20 cylinder 1010J's ever been built for non-rail applications?
The big issue is that Caterpillar, which owns and controls Progress Rail, uses its own 20-cylinder C175 for genset use as well as for potential high-speed locomotive prime mover capability. Since North American railroads have repeatedly preferred ~4400hp individual units to 6000hp, I wouldn't expect a 1010J engine to be, well, more than 12 cylinders in a North American freight locomotive. similar to how GE uses 12- and not 16-cylinder power in most of their GEVO-equipped locomotives.
bogie_engineer The change of most significance is the mounting of the alternator to the rear of the engine on cast extensions and the provision for the isolation mounts on the crankcase. The two-stage turbo mountings at the front instead of the rear, intercooler and aftercooler mounting, and EGR plumbing also caused changes as I recall. I believe the whole front end geartrain and water, oil, and high pressure fuel pumps were all changed to work around the charge air coolers.
The change of most significance is the mounting of the alternator to the rear of the engine on cast extensions and the provision for the isolation mounts on the crankcase. The two-stage turbo mountings at the front instead of the rear, intercooler and aftercooler mounting, and EGR plumbing also caused changes as I recall. I believe the whole front end geartrain and water, oil, and high pressure fuel pumps were all changed to work around the charge air coolers.
timz "265H" means 265 mm bore? And "1010J" means 1010 cubic inches? Same cylinder size on both?
"265H" means 265 mm bore? And "1010J" means 1010 cubic inches? Same cylinder size on both?
Yes
It's much the same engine, "rebranded" to eliminate the potential negative publicity attributed to the 265H (and now, thanks to inside knowledge, keeping clear of certain potential support disagreements...) I'll leave it to the ex-EMD people familiar with the engine development to list the detail-design differences; I only got them second- or third-hand. (I for one would like the see the differences between the H-block and J-block given definitively in one place...)
In my opinion it was a fundamentally good engine then, and remains one now.
Erik_MagOne of the more interesting diesel engine research projects is using a series of tubes around the injectors that will act like Bunsen burners. The idea is that the tubes prevent ignition from occuring until the fuel has a chance to mix with the air, with the combustion process similar to a spark ignited "mxiture" engine (AKA gasoline engine).
Note that GDI engines seem to be taking over from any design involving pre-cylinder carburetion (specifically including any lean-burn or stratified-charge approaches, or even polynucleate autoignition). Unsurprisingly, GDI engines are starting to demonstrate similar generation of nanoparticulates as high-pressure common-rail diesels when operated at high speed and I wouldn't be surprised that raising the CR would have some effect on reducing this (where diesel oxidation catalysts don't, and of course DPFs don't matter at all).
Actually holding at Tier 3 would have produced significant gains. The Class I's purchased ~7,500 Tier 2 and Tier 3 models between 2005 and the late 2010's (including the so-called Tier 4 credit units). The loco's not only reduced emissions via their enhanced engine designs, they also contributed to significant fuel efficiency gains. Every gallon of diesel not burned yields a 100% reduction in emissions.
I have been involved in the creation of locomotive emission inventories. Over longer time periods, such as 2007 to 2014, fuel efficiency gains alone were enough to reduce overall rail sector emissions. Add in the cleaner engines and NOX decreased over 145,000 tons despite national GTM's hitting an all-time high in 2014: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VH085-5Qo0_VAzI3SsMbPcpe16liFN2p/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=118098283392484026734&rtpof=true&sd=true
The other issue with the regs is that they treat all areas of the country the same. California hasn't been able to meet any of the ozone air quality standards (1979 1-hour 0.12 ppm, 1998 8-hour 0.08 ppm, 2008 8-hour 75 ppb, or 2015 8-hour 70 ppb). States like Illinois have been able to reduce ozone to meet each of the successive ozone standards, except for the latest 2015 standard of 70 ppb. Even with that, air quality in Illinois is just barely over the current standard. California needs zero or near zero emitting locomotives (along with all of the help that they can get with the other mobile source sectors) so that they can even make a dent in their problem. That is not the case for other parts of the country. Tier 4 is overkill and because of the fuel efficiency problem the Class I's have decided to rebuild Tier 1+ locos en masse. Defeat has been effectively snatched from the jaws of victory.
ns145 EPA will likely move to revise the locomotive emissions regs in the near future due to the lack of Tier 4 purchases by the Class I's - https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/petitions-address-harmful-emissions-locomotives.
EPA will likely move to revise the locomotive emissions regs in the near future due to the lack of Tier 4 purchases by the Class I's - https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/petitions-address-harmful-emissions-locomotives.
I've made comments in the past about how Tier 4 could backfire, with my argument that a Tier 3.5 could have resulted in more reductions in emissions than Tier 4 because the railroads would likely to buy a lot more Tier 3.5 locomotives. Tier 4 would only be a benefit if railroads would buy Tier 4 locomotives in quantity.
I also remember very similar discussions back in the early 1970's where many said that one of the things needed to solve the smog problem was to have people keep their cars for longer. The truth was the exact opposite, where the need was to have people stop driving the older cars.
One of the more interesting diesel engine research projects is using a series of tubes around the injectors that will act like Bunsen burners. The idea is that the tubes prevent ignition from occuring until the fuel has a chance to mix with the air, with the combustion process similar to a spark ignited "mxiture" engine (AKA gasoline engine).
FGR is a nifty strategy for powerplant combustion, and EGR would have similar promise... if there weren't so many damn problems with it on road and rail vehicles! (Cue Shadow the Cat's Owner for the many relevant issues!) On the other hand, diesel engines make better fuel economy and emit lower levels of dangerous nanoparticulates when run with high compression ratio at relatively restrained speed and steady state or slow speed changes... the problem being that NOx emissions increase then, and the EPA has (in my opinion) over-demonized nitrogen oxide emissions in the Tier 4 spec. (Remember that NOx has indeed been a factor in photochemical smog, but that required reaction with airborne HC/VOC... which have been tremendously reduced by the combination of better mileage and mandatory catalytic conversion...)
The point is that once a railroad has bitten the bullet, or some agency has government-provided the necessary paraphernalia, regarding locomotive SCR, it becomes possible to crank the compression ratio back up to high levels... and just use slightly more DEF to remediate as close to 100% of the NOx as you can control ammonia slip. This has not caught on, and perhaps with the push to zero-carbon it won't soon if at all, but it does represent an attractive reason to adopt what EPA has in the past indicated to be its actual priority. without having to fund it as directly mandated.
BaltACD CSSHEGEWISCH Part of the problem is that the fuel efficiency of locomotives that meet Tier 4 standards is less than older models. There also doesn't seem to be much demand for locomotives of that size. Until more efficient technology is brought to bear on attaining Tier 4 standards with better than Tier 3 fuel economy - there won't be all the many new built Tier 4's, but a lot of rebuilt Tier 3's. In a manner of speaking Tier 4 locomotives are the 1970's era automobiles with their 'smog controls' - inefficient, gas hogs with virtually no power; as automotive technology progressed we have cleaner, more powerful and fuel efficient engines today.
CSSHEGEWISCH Part of the problem is that the fuel efficiency of locomotives that meet Tier 4 standards is less than older models. There also doesn't seem to be much demand for locomotives of that size.
Until more efficient technology is brought to bear on attaining Tier 4 standards with better than Tier 3 fuel economy - there won't be all the many new built Tier 4's, but a lot of rebuilt Tier 3's.
In a manner of speaking Tier 4 locomotives are the 1970's era automobiles with their 'smog controls' - inefficient, gas hogs with virtually no power; as automotive technology progressed we have cleaner, more powerful and fuel efficient engines today.
SCR on the Tier 4 Siemens Chargers seems to be working fine with plenty of orders from multiple passenger railroads. Prime selling point is the large improvement in fuel efficiency. If you read thru the narrative part of the USEPA locomotive emission regs the EGR control technology selected by the Class I's wasn't regarded as being a feasible solution back in 2008 in part due to the fuel efficiency penalty. The Class I's forced GE and EMD into pursuing EGR because they didn't want to setup a distribution infrastructure for urea or be forced to shut a locomotive down because it had run out of urea. EMD's 710 engine probably would have been able to meet Tier 4 with SCR controls. Forcing the use of EGR was short-sighted thinking in my opinion.
All of the large Wabtech GE rebuild programs only meet Tier 1+ standards, which represents no change from the original locomotives with overhauled prime movers. The Tier 3 rebuilds are primarily ECO rebuild kits used for small numbers of locos used in switching service. EPA will likely move to revise the locomotive emissions regs in the near future due to the lack of Tier 4 purchases by the Class I's - https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/petitions-address-harmful-emissions-locomotives.
Matt Rose's chickens are coming home to roost.
kgbw49 China bought 300 EMD HXN3 6,000 HP H-engined locomotives almost 20 years ago. How did the 6000 HP units work out in China?
China bought 300 EMD HXN3 6,000 HP H-engined locomotives almost 20 years ago.
How did the 6000 HP units work out in China?
To the OP--Bigger isn't always better.
CSSHEGEWISCHPart of the problem is that the fuel efficiency of locomotives that meet Tier 4 standards is less than older models. There also doesn't seem to be much demand for locomotives of that size.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
SD90MAC-2? :)
Part of the problem is that the fuel efficiency of locomotives that meet Tier 4 standards is less than older models. There also doesn't seem to be much demand for locomotives of that size.
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