Alternate Fuels

[Anonymous]

Seeking info on alternate fuels used in locomotives. Two examples follow.
BN 7149 and 7890 were converted to run on natural gas. I haven't found anything about the test, other than the fact that it occurred.

UP No. 57 was converted to burn natural gas. It too isn't well documented.

Can someone provide more or point me in the direction where more info may be found?

[Anonymous]

Sir, I'm afraid you might run into brick walls on that subject. My Boss's son tried to do a sceince project on alternative fuels. The railroad companies and engine manufacture's are very secretive about that information for fear of tipping off the competition. I too am interested on any information about those engines.
TIM A

[Anonymous]

I doubt there is much secrecy about either BNSF or UP's LNG/Diesel programs as both projects are long dead. Both TRAINS and EXTRA 2200 SOUTH ran articles about this at the time(1997-98). Essentially the problem was one of converting a conventional Diesel engine to run on a mixture of LNG and diesel fuel. The latter was necessary because natural gas will not easily ignite in a compression engine, so the diesel fuel served as the ignitor. The ratio was something like 90% gas to 10% diesel. In order to acheive this efficiently the Diesel engine cylinder heads would have had to be completely redesigned. The most successful locomotive design to use LNG was the MK/Boise Locomotive MP1200G. This uses a caterpillar 3516G engine which has a spark plug ignition system designed from the outset to burn natural gas.

[edblysard]

I think the Boise/Mk is still running around on the L.A Junction, City of Industry? And if memory serves me, (and it just might not) didn't the build two for the project?
Ed

[wabash1]

I need help with our statement. It is my understanding that Lng ignites much easier than fuel oil (diesel) so compression/ignition works well for a diesel. now if Lng ignites with a spark then it seems that the problem to me is timing of the injection into the cylinder. to soon ignites and stops cylinder from reaching the top.( most common name spark knock). but much more Lng would be needed to do the same as diesel. also the most efficient design for any combustion chamber is a hemi design. and last i knew of that is what all diesel engines were.

So in other words what you are saying is lower the compression and add a ignition system and run this on lng. well then it seems like we should just put chevey dodge and a few ford engines in these and run trains??? hey i bet my LS1 ( from gm firebird in my sd 70) will out run your 5.0 (fords mustang) in your dash 8.....

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the information. Yes I did read those article's. What I was refering to, is what would make alternative fuels work. EMD,CAT and GE all have said in order for alternative fuels to work it would require a redesign of the engines. The redisgn of the engines to make alternative fuels work, that is what they are secretive about. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
TIM A

[edblysard]

Hi Tim,
Lets go down a little diffrent path for a minute.
Remember when disc brakes were "new" to automobiles? They showed up in the late 60s as optional equipment on some of the "pony cars"?
By the middle 70s, front wheel disc were common, rear wheel disc only on vettes and such, 80s and 90s about the same, front disc, rear drums a industry standard, but now, 4 wheel disc are in demand, and auto makers as putting them on as standard equipment. But, the technology for disc brakes has exsisted for decades before the 60s. Most of the streamlined passenger railcars, & almost all pullmans cars had disc brakes, and almost every airplane from WWII on has been designed with them. So why did it take so long for the automoblie industry to "catch up"? Because it cost a huge amount to retool a plant to make a major change in production runs, and the consumers didnt really care if it was disc brakes or not, just so long as it stopped. No demand, no change needed. Most of your new cars are almost the same as the year before, just diffrent sheetmetal, maby a few more toots, bells and horns, and cd players, but not really new. Same with locomotives. It would cost a tremendous amount of money to start a production of a truly new engine, millions upon millions, and because the demand for new engines and fuels isnt really there, GE and EMD arn't going to invest in the retooling & design work needed.
Railroads arn't demanding "new" locomotives, just bigger and "better" versions of the same basic design. Yes, I know about EMD's new prime mover, but if you think about it, its still just a diesel, a really big one, but still just a diesel. No demand, no change. The few examples you read about are, for the most part, experiments funded by a railroad to try to adapt current designs to a more economical fuel. If it works, they would experiment more, if not, it dies. And because it may work in the future, any R&D they might have will be closly guarded. If it didnt work, they wouldn't publi***he fact, it would just quitely dissappear. If it did work, they wouldn't share it with anybody.
So, the ability to build an efficient, alternative fuel engine exsist, (take Honda's ceramic engine, geat idea, but no consumer demand) but, because of no real market for them, at least not yet, none have been produced in mass. But you can bet Honda's research and development team has the specs and prototypes safely tucked away, just in case..
Good luck.
Ed

[Anonymous]

It seems to stand out in memory, that GE tried a project back in the late 1980's, They modified one of their Dash-8, somethings, to run on a sort of "coal slurry". I have absolutely no idea of how that worked, but I do remember reading about it in an issue of Trains. It obviously was a flop, since we have not seen any repeats since.
Recently, there have been very sucessful tests of burning soybean oil in diesel engines. The common term used is "Bio-Diesel". I suppose if we ever have a REAL oil shortage, we could tap the great plains for a cultivated, not drilled, source of energy. However, it seems to me, that the costs of processing the soybeans into oil would not be very economical. Example, go to the nearest filling station that sells diesel fuel. You are going to see about a buck-ten, per gallon, depending where you are. Now, go to the supermarket, and put a gallons worth of vegetable oil in your shopping cart. When you get to the check-out, see what the tally is. Just food for thought.
Todd C.

[Anonymous]

IIRC, GE modified a DASH8-39B to burn a mixture of Coal slurry and diesel fuel. It was technically successful but none of the railroads showed interest after BN stopped it's alternative fuels program. Nowadays such a system would almost certainly flunk EPA standards.
I've also seen a design for a modified diesel burning coal gas produced by a gas producer firebed system in a tender......

[Anonymous]

BNSF 1200-1201 (MK-1200 LNG) run on Liquified Natural Gas and are
being used in Los Angeles on the BNSF-owned Los Angeles Junction
Railway.
When were they built?
Were they rebuilds or new?
Builders numbers?
Are they still in service?
Do they still use LNG?

Anybody have particulars? Has any article been published? If so,
where?

Hank Morris

[oltmannd]

There was one technical hurdle they GE couldn't get over. They couldn't control errosion of the fuel injector nozzles due to ash (non-coal) content in the slurry mixture.

Diesels are generally very fuel tolerant, though. The EMD 2 cycle particularly so. In one particular AAR funded project at Southwest Research in the 1980s, fuels varying from natural gas, ethanol and methanol through vegetable oil to #6/residual fuel oil were qualified on single cylinder research engines, then tested on full sized 12 cylinder engines. (SwRI has an EMD 12-645E3 and a GE 12-7FDL.) Some don't compression ignite, like the alcohols and natural gas, and require a pilot injection of #2 diesel, but some, like veg. oil, did OK on their own. The EMD engine will run on very low cetane (cetane rating on diesel fuel is like octane rating on gasoline...more or less) fuels pretty much as-is. The GE is less tolerant and requires more mods to accomodate alt. fuels.

What has killed all these alt. fuel projects over time has been the continued low cost of #2 diesel, particularly compared to the alternatives. At one time, it was thought that nat'l gas would be much cheaper, but power expansion/conversion and dual fuel capability have pretty much meant that nat'l gas and fuel oil prices rise and fall together. I think diesel fuel is here to stay until fuel cells become practical. Their high efficiency (double that of diesel engines!) may create fuel savings great enough to justify investment in fuel handling and other technical barriers. If a RR has 3000 road locos burning 400,000 gallons of diesel a year at $0.75, thats a $900,000,000 annual fuel bill. If you can save half of that each year, you could certainly justify several billion in capital spending to make it happen.

[Anonymous]

Oddly enough, BNSF is still running LPG-powered M-K locos in Los Angeles.
So, maybe BN stopped its program, but BNSF is still testing.