Imaginary Locomotives

[Mark Saunders]

My thoughts on Hydrogen is wind power when in surplus  for electrolysis and then burn the stored hydrogen for electricity when the wind isn’t blowing !

[DenysW]

There are answers for lower pressure storage of hydrogen (in underground cavities you can assume 1 psi/ft, so a storage cavern 1000 ft below ground level can store hydrogen at 1000 psi) but this isn't an answer for moving hydrogen burners/consumers. So yes technically for the National Grid (but maybe no financially), but no for steam locomotives.

[tythatguy1312]

Hydrogen doesn't look like a good fuel for steam locomotives, being hard to store, easy to burn off by accident. I don't see it working myself.

Vegetable Oil on the other hand...

[AlfaZagato]

I know here, in the US, that the UP has converted at least the Big Boy to fuel oil.   Is there a comparable renewable oil that can be substituted?

[Zomboid]

Fuel oil is diesel, right? It could probably run on biodiesel at worst.

[MikeOxon]

We may have to adopt the Russian method:

 

see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebHLKahLyx4

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by MikeOxon

[62613]

27 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Fuel oil is diesel, right? It could probably run on biodiesel at worst.

We always called the stuff left over from the refining processes "Fuel Oil", or High Viscosity Fuel when I was at sea. It needed heating to allow it to be pumped properly and to atomise correctly in boiler burners. If you were using it in your propulsion diesel, you had to treat it as well, to get rid of the nasties

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, 62613 said:

We always called the stuff left over from the refining processes "Fuel Oil", or High Viscosity Fuel when I was at sea. It needed heating to allow it to be pumped properly and to atomise correctly in boiler burners. If you were using it in your propulsion diesel, you had to treat it as well, to get rid of the nasties

Isn't the heavy distillate called "Bunker Fuel"?  Use as a railway fuel is unlikely to be acceptable considering (this certainly used to be the case) that merchant vessels were not allowed to operate it within a certain distance of many countries' coasts.  Engines were operated on diesel to leave port then switched over once over the threshold (and the reverse when entering port); it was always used in large vessels because as the residue from refining, it is almost a waste product and thus VERY cheap - which is important when you might be travelling about 10ft/gallon - but tends to produce lots of visible and not-so-visible pollutants.

[rodent279]

1 hour ago, MikeOxon said:

We may have to adopt the Russian method:

 

Unions might have a problem with the new uniforms.

[rodent279]

2 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

We may have to adopt the Russian method:

 

see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebHLKahLyx4

 

Could this be the DfT's answer to bionic duck weed? Jobs for all those out of work East German weightlifters?

[62613]

3 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Isn't the heavy distillate called "Bunker Fuel"?  Use as a railway fuel is unlikely to be acceptable considering (this certainly used to be the case) that merchant vessels were not allowed to operate it within a certain distance of many countries' coasts.  Engines were operated on diesel to leave port then switched over once over the threshold (and the reverse when entering port); it was always used in large vessels because as the residue from refining, it is almost a waste product and thus VERY cheap - which is important when you might be travelling about 10ft/gallon - but tends to produce lots of visible and not-so-visible pollutants.

Yes, they were one and the same. Another reason for switching to MDO when manouevring was that it didn't need heating. There were experiments with manouevring on HFO on a couple of ships I was aboard

 

[Suzie]

Surely the answer to NOX combustion products when burning hydrogen is to burn it in a nitrogen free atmosphere. If you are making hydrogen from electricity then exactly the correct amount of oxygen is free as a by-product, just bottle it at the same time.

 

Now, how to store the gasses on a preserved steam train? How far would you get if you used a MkI GUV with 30t of oxygen and hydrogen tanks in it? Shouldn't look too out of place and a bit of through piping should not be too hard to avoid having to remarshal the GUV next to the loco, or perhaps just replace the GUV with a newly refilled one at each end of the line when running round if 15t of gas won't get you very far.

[Gibbo675]

3 minutes ago, Suzie said:

Surely the answer to NOX combustion products when burning hydrogen is to burn it in a nitrogen free atmosphere. If you are making hydrogen from electricity then exactly the correct amount of oxygen is free as a by-product, just bottle it at the same time.

 

Now, how to store the gasses on a preserved steam train? How far would you get if you used a MkI GUV with 30t of oxygen and hydrogen tanks in it? Shouldn't look too out of place and a bit of through piping should not be too hard to avoid having to remarshal the GUV next to the loco, or perhaps just replace the GUV with a newly refilled one at each end of the line when running round if 15t of gas won't get you very far.

Hi Suzie,

 

It would seem to me that to separate out the nitrogen form the combustion atmosphere will take even more energy than to to just acquire the hydrogen in the first place. Where does the energy for that process come from, where does the energy to acquire the hydrogen come also as this never seems to be quoted in the efficiency or environmental calculations?

 

Gibbo.

[33C]

I wonder if clockwork would be viable on the prototype......?

[Gibbo675]

Just now, 33C said:

I wonder if clockwork would be viable on the prototype......?

Only if you account for smelting of the steel and all of the alloying elements that go into the manufacturing of the massive spring, and also take into account all of the cow farts from the amount of beef you will have eat to be able to turn the key that will wind up the spring.

[33C]

We had a steel industry once.........torque bars would be useful.......and i recall Jack Ray perfected a controllable governor to maximise running time/energy output........

[billbedford]

53 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

It would seem to me that to separate out the nitrogen form the combustion atmosphere will take even more energy than to to just acquire the hydrogen in the first place. Where does the energy for that process come from, where does the energy to acquire the hydrogen come also as this never seems to be quoted in the efficiency or environmental calculations?

 

In a previous life I had the use of a contraption that electrolysed water to form a oxygen-hydrogen mixture which was then used to power a small (silver) soldering torch. By small I mean it was good enough for soldering the posts onto earrings but not for anything much bigger.  

 

I wonder if such a gas mixture would get hot enough under compression to work as a pseudo-diesel engine. 

[Gibbo675]

6 hours ago, billbedford said:

 

In a previous life I had the use of a contraption that electrolysed water to form a oxygen-hydrogen mixture which was then used to power a small (silver) soldering torch. By small I mean it was good enough for soldering the posts onto earrings but not for anything much bigger.  

 

I wonder if such a gas mixture would get hot enough under compression to work as a pseudo-diesel engine. 

Hi Bill,

 

I would suggest that the differential of the volume of flame in a locomotive firebox to provide traction to a train as compared with your soldering torch may well provide the problem of scaling such a contraption.

 

Gibbo.

[Suzie]

Since with hydrogen holding about 40KWh per kg it takes about 200Kg of hydrogen to produce the same energy as a tonne of coal it should not be too hard to power a steam locomotive with hydrogen even if the hydrogen tanks are a bit heavy and new emissions law requires you to carry around a tank of oxygen too.

 

Perhaps it will be the advent of the 'Techno-Tender' consisting of hydrogen tank, oxygen tank, condenser to make water from the exhaust steam, and perhaps a 25KV electrolysis plant to fill the tanks overnight by raising the pantograph discreetly in the shed...

[PhilJ W]

Has anyone considered hot air instead of steam? After all hot air engines have been around for years and work on similar principles to a steam engine. There will be no need to carry around water and the tender space could be used for batteries.

Here is a suggested source of hot air.

 

[Suzie]

7 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Has anyone considered hot air instead of steam? After all hot air engines have been around for years and work on similar principles to a steam engine. There will be no need to carry around water and the tender space could be used for batteries.

Here is a suggested source of hot air.

 

 

A special compartment in the front coach labelled "MPs only"

[DK123GWR]

2 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Has anyone considered hot air instead of steam? After all hot air engines have been around for years and work on similar principles to a steam engine. There will be no need to carry around water and the tender space could be used for batteries.

Here is a suggested source of hot air.

 

A very effective source too - even in November it can get very sweaty inside the Commons chamber. If they could pump some air between Westminster Hall (usually quite chilly) and the chamber both spaces would be far more comfortable.

[DenysW]

Suzie -

 

Unfortunately you've omitted the drying, compression and liquefaction stage for both the hydrogen and the oxygen, and these are both power-hogs. As oxygen-safe compressors aren't cheap either, it might be better for the oxygen to put in a small air-separation plant and get 93% oxygen, 5% argon, 2% nitrogen out as a liquid. It wouldn't be efficient though: the smallest commercial units do 50 tonnes/day of liquid.

 

Sorry!

[DenysW]

According to the forest research website, wood pellets dried to 10% moisture have 45% of the calorific value of coal on a volume basis, meaning a wood-pellets-driven steam engine would need 2.2 times the bunker volume of a coal-fired loco.

[Mark Saunders]

18 minutes ago, Suzie said:

 

A special compartment in the front coach labelled "MPs only"

Sorry but Taurus Excretum is the main byproduct!