[thackney]

Potential of liquefied natural gas use as a railroad fuel
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/section_issues.cfm#liq_nat_gas

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Years ago, we sold a blend of N2 and light cycle oil (N4 distillate) as “Rail Road Diesel.” It had a bit more BTUs/gallon than regular N2 oil.

[mountainlion]

This seems quite expensive and silly when we have the greatest carbon based energy in the world. These engines can be slightly modified to run on crude oil also. crude is cheaper to transport and safer also. Why are they dreaming up such expensive ideas? Who will get all the money behind this?

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

“Some major railroad operators view the potential of LNG-fueled trains as similar to the switch from steam propulsion to diesel in the 1940s and 1950s, a revolution in freight rail known as dieselization.”

While I’m a plenty big fan of the general uptake of NG and LNG, I just don’t see the feasibility of the “L” part of LNG. To convert NG into a liquified state requires several thousand pounds of pressure and cryogenic processing. It’s absolutely not like propane (like a BBQ) which liquifies at ~~125 psi and “room” temperature.

So to convert a fleet of locos to LNG would require fairly massive facilities sprinkled about the country, and of course, that LNG could be used for a hundred other fuel-consuming things and thus that cost would be shared. Additionally, some amount of the NG has to be allowed to boil off and vent during transport. (Certain to drive the global warming nerds batty) The interim challenges to providing such an infrastrucure are non-trivial. Likewise....providing pipelines all over the place to transport diesel is/was non-trivial. But all these projects have to start here and end there and they are projects typically measured in maybe a decade. That’s if the underlying industry gets serious about it. We’ve been screwing around with several goofball forms of so-called “energy policy” for FIFTY YEARS now.

I keep looking around for more & more info about this, so thanks for the article. Color me skeptical but entirely supportive.

[saganite]

I can’t wait for the first one of those to go up in a town somewhere.

[indthkr]

alternative fuels bump for later.....