Description of General Electric's Proposed Coal-Fueled Locomotive Demonstration Project

Transcription

1 Description of General Electric's Proposed Coal-Fueled Locomotive Demonstration Project 1.1 Coal-fueled locomotives fit the definition of an Emerging Clean Coal Technology. General Electric's proposed project will result In: the demonstration of two prototype CFL locomotives In actual freight hauling service, the demonstration of direct coal combustion in gas turbines and diesel engines sized to fit in locomotive sized applications, development of systems required to apply advanced coal preparation and cleaning technologies to the railroad environment, development of control systems to maximize coal combustion efficiency and CFL reliability. The development of a CFL would significantly affect one of the nation's largest industries ~ the railroad industry. But more important, applying the latest combustion and material technologies to locomotive powerplants will allow the nation to increase the use of domestic coal with a minimal environmental impact. When put in actual freight hauling

2 "revenue" service, the proposed full scale demonstration locomotives will provide a definitive answer to whether coal-fueled locomotives are commercially feasible and environmentally acceptable. Not only does the CFL project match the intent of the Congress in creating the Clean Coal Technology program, it also has the major benefit of being a very visible demonstration. Unlike some technologies used in utility generating plants or industrial factories, a locomotive is not stationary. It can be transported anywhere the public would like to see it. The generated public support could rally opinion behind government sponsorship of further coal technology development. 1.2 Description of General Electric's coalfueled locomotive (CFL) development and demonstration program per the list of required items stipulated in the Senate Appropriations Committee report accompanying Section 320, H.R Item (1) Description of the technology to be employed and of the overall project. General Electric proposes to demonstrate direct burning, coal-fueled internal combustion engines in locomotives. Two prototype locomotives would be built, one using a coal burning diesel engine, the other using a coal burning gas turbine. (This dual path is proposed because there is insufficient data available today to indicate which of these prime movers will result in the more economically and technically feasible CFL configuration). Both prototypes would use the maximum possible amount of existing proven locomotive technologies. This includes using the electric drive and control systems components currently being used in Page 5

3 commercially available oil-fueled diesel electric locomotives. (See Fig. 1-1, 1-2, and 1-3 for diagrams of the proposed locomotives). The overall intent of the proposed demonstration is to produce a locomotive with a minimum number of new unproven systems, and a maximum compatability with the existing US railroad locomotive fleet. The technology selection was based on General Electric's market leadership in understanding CFL system alternatives. That leadership is based on General Electric's: experience as a major locomotive manufacturer for over 75 years experience in participating in CFL programs and current development work on coal combustion exhaustive, railroad sponsored, 30 month study comparing promising CFL systems (currently 80% complete) unique "unbiased" perspective of being a manufacturer of components for all of the alternative systems ranging from diesel engines to gas turbines to steam turbines The diesel engine development will start with the proven GE model FDL oil-fueled engine design. It is a highly efficient 4-cycle, turbocharged, medium speed, V block engine. (See Fig 1-4). The starting point for gas turbine development will be the GE LM500, an industrial/marine engine derived from aircraft engine gas turbines. The LM500 is a 14-stage compressor coupled to a two-stage, air cooled high pressure turbine which drives a four-stage power turbine. The engine combustor is an annular design. (See Fig. 1-5). We anticipate that the major areas of development for both types of power plants will be in creating efficient combustion hardware, improving fuel injection/delivery techniques, defining required fuel qualities, and applying advanced wear resistant materials. General Electric has already begun small scale coal combustion development, and anticipates doing significant "interim" development leading up to the CFL program. At the beginning of the CFL program, diesel Page 6

4 engine development will be continued on instrumented single cylinder test stands in laboratories at GE's Erie, Pennsylvania plant. Once the final design parameters are established, development and testing of multi-cylinder engines will begin. Gas turbine development will be centered mainly at General Electric's Evandale, Ohio plant. Turbine evaluation has already begun by burning coal fuels in a sector combustor and turbine nozzle. The CFL program will expand on this work, and ultimately lead to work on full turbine systems. Facilities and expertise at GE's Corporate Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York will be used to complement the development efforts. "CR&D" has been involved in coal utilization and advanced materials research for many years. The current science of coal combustion in diesel engines and gas turbines is incomplete. There is the possibility that one of those approaches may run into technical roadblocks which are either uneconomical or impossible to solve with existing state-of-the-art equipment and materials. In that case, the GE program will drop development of that unsuccessful engine before reaching the locomotive prototype building stage. Full effort will then be focused on the remaining engine technology. General Electric's program allows this flexibility by concentrating on building the actual locomotive system in the last stage of the program. See Fig Overall, we feel it is more efficient to do the full engine development in an instrumented test cell, rather than finishing the engine design in the cramped confines of a locomotive carbody. We currently anticipate that the locomotives will use coal water slurry (CWS) fuel. The coal particles in the slurry will be micronized with the maximum possible reductions in ash and sulphur content. Solutions to CWS handling and storage problems will be developed as part of the program, especially in the areas of locomotive onboard fuel storage and delivery systems. Coal slurries and powders used in engine development will come primarily from Otisca, Ltd. of Syracuse, New York. In the last stage of the development process, the diesel engine and gas turbine will each be mounted in a full-scale, fully operational locomotive. Initial testing will take place on the GE's test track in Erie. We anticipate a second stage of testing at the railroad research facililty in Pueblo, Colorado. In stage three, the prototypes will be applied in a wide variety Page 7

5 of actual freight hauling service in a wide variety of environments. The GE "test car," a converted railroad passenger car with extensive instrumentation and computer systems, will be used to continuously monitor the locomotives' performance when they are in actual use. Periodic equipment teardown inspections will be used to evaluate component life. Overall, General Electric is confident that the prototypes will supply meaningful demonstrations which will answer the technical, commercial and environmental questions about CFL technology. Item (2) Comparison of the proposed project with any similar project or facility in existence. There are no CFLs in regular use in the US today. They were in use from the beginning of railroading in the early 1800's until All were replaced by diesel-electric locomotives because of the overwhelming advantages in efficiency, usable pulling power, maintainability, and reliability. The high price of diesel fuels has prompted several firms to propose various CFL system designs. However, actual production of prototypes has not started Existing railroad locomotives use oil-fueled diesel-electric technology. As shown in Figure 1-1, the diesel engine (powerplant) drives an alternator That power is rectified and sent to traction motors hung on each axle. A control system "oversees" this process. For a more insight into the current oil-fueled locomotive state-of-the-art, see the description of our current "Dash-8" product line in Appendix 1. Although some have depicted CFLs as super streamlined, futuristic machines, in reality they will probably be externally identical to today's locomotives. Internally, most of the locomotive systems will be the same the electric drives, control system, and auxiliary machines. Overall, the only substantial difference between today's locomotive and a CFL will be in the powerplant. In terms of performance, coal locomotives will be the functional equivalents of current oil-fueled units. Page 8

6 Item (3) Proposed ownership of the project facility. No new facilities are required to implement the CFL project. Ownership of the locomotive equipment produced will depend on the final form of government sponsorship. That is discussed under Item (7). Item (4) Projected capital, operating and testing costs and a schedule for construction and testing the project facility General Electric believes that the proposed CFL program will yield the earliest possible date for starting meaningful demonstrations. The overall program schedule showing the parallel diesel engine/gas turbine powerplant development is displayed in Fig The following are more specific schedules: Development Schedule Figure Number Coal-Fueled Diesel Engine 1-7 Coal-Fueled Gas Turbine 1-8 Locomotive Systems 1-9 General Electric's program will cost $81.5 million dollars to implement. The nature and timing of those costs is described in Fig Item (5) Characteristics of the coal to be used One of the goals of the program is to use coal from any source in the US. We will attempt to meet that challenge in two ways: making the combustion process as insensitive as possible to variations in coal fuel qualities; and working with a coal preparation technology which can remove the variations in fuel quality. Today, it is hard to predict how insensitive diesel engines or gas turbines will be to changes in coal fuel qualities. It is likely that some efficiency Page 9

7 will be lost to accomodate a wide variety of fuel characteristics. With a narrow spectrum of allowed fuel qualities, the engines could be more finely "tuned." As with oil-fueled diesel engines today, accepting fuel with a cheaper, lower cost fuel may result in higher maintenance costs due to accelerated wear. Ideally, the optimal solution is to be able to produce a consistent quality coal water slurry fuel regardless of the type of coal input to the coal preparation process. Conceivably, if the process can completely isolate the desired combustible carbons from unwanted ash content, sulphurs, and other minerals, the quality of the input coal would only determine process yield rates not output quality. General Electric is involved in the development of engine grade fuels with Otisca, Ltd., (in which we are a major stockholder). These CWS fuels will probably have particle sizes in the 5 micron range with ash contents near 0.1%. Otisca's proprietary process for creating these fuels is based on using agglomerants which allow for physical separation of the coal from unwanted minerals. Construction of pilot processing plants and ultimately full scale facilities will be done in time to support the fuel needs during development and demonstration. Since the cost of coal preparation also affects the CFL operating cost, having on-line process capacity will add realism to the CFL feasibility analysis input data. See Appendix 2 for more information on the Otisca fuel development program. Item (6) Emission reductions to be achieved by the facility. Today, locomotive emissions are rather insignificant and are not regulated. Locomotives operate primarily in rural areas where their contribution to atmospheric pollution has little impact on overall air quality. CFL technology is an opportunity to increase the use of coal with minimal environmental impact. By using cleaned coal in direct burning engines, we Page 10

8 expect to have low SOx outputs. There will be some NOx emissions, but we expect little if any significant increase over that currently produced by oil-fueled locomotives. Again, because the amount of NOx produced by the nation's locomotive fleet is a very small contributor to overall atmospheric pollution, the magnitude of any NOx increases will be negligible. However, assuming that the nation's railroads were forced to convert rapidly to coal and this program had not been completed, they would have to use CFL technology with high pollution control costs. Technologies immediately available involve burning run-of-mine coal in steam boilers. The steam would either power turbine driven electric drives or reciprocating rod mechanical drives. These locomotives would have to carry large exhaust gas cleaning systems onboard (i.e. scrubbers or baghouses). Not only would these systems be expensive, but they could also reduce the locomotive's reliability. The downtime caused by pollution control system maintenance may end up costing even more than the initial system costs. By developing a truly clean coal system, General Electric will reduce the future cost of controlling CFL emissions. Item (7) Proposed financing of the project, including a statement of any cost sharing or incentives, including any financial assistance, that should be provided by the Federal Government and the justification for such incentives. Government sponsorship of a CFL demonstration is necessary to accelerate the commercial availability of coal burning technology for the railroads. In the absence of such sponsorship, the timing of returns, the commercial risks, and the technological risks will keep credible locomotive manufacturers and the railroad industry from speeding up the CFL development process. We estimate that government investment in the program will speed up the process of railroad conversion to coal use by a minimum of 10 years. That means the nation could receive the benefits of having coal powered railroads 10 years earlier, increases in national security, improvements in the trade balance, and higher employment Page 11

9 levels. Therefore, General Electric recommends that the government fund as much of the CFL program as possible in the interest of accelerating the program. General Electric will evaluate the need for additional resources over an above those to be provided by the Federal Government, and will structure the CFL program with supplemental private sector funds as required. Until Congress actually appropriates the money for the program, and more specifically for the CFL project, efforts to raise capital or to budget funds internally would be purely speculative. We are currently analyzing the alternate forms of government/commercial participation in funding of the contemplated program. Examples of alternatives we would evaluate range from direct grant funding, to cost-sharing contracts, to commercial joint venture consortia, to using government loan guarantees to facilitate the gathering of capital resources for a spin-off venture exclusively dedicated to the CFL project. Overall, in evaluating the alternatives, GE is looking for ways to give the government a fair return on its investment. As the program becomes better defined, General Electric will promote and encourage further discussions with the Department of Energy and other appropriate government agencies as to the form and amount of government financial assistance. Item (8) Statement of the project economics which identifies the assumptions used. The CFL project will have a direct effect on the cost of operating railroads. For the direct burning diesel engine and gas turbine systems, the only real impacts to the operating cost will be maintenance and fuel cost. The following table shows the potential savings for these designs over the best oil-fueled locomotive available today. Since the specific dollar amounts will vary with the intensity of locomotive use, the data is presented in an index form. (For example, the indices show that fuel cost for today's locomotive is seven times the maintenance cost). Page 12

10 PAGE MISSING

11 diesel engine and gas turbine provide the optimum alternative for the railroads. Item (9) Plan outlining the uses for the products of the proposed facility. The CFL will be a final product with an already defined use and market. CFLs will be used to haul freight on the nation's railroads. General Electric anticipates that the developed coal-fueled powerplants will also be applied in marine and stationary power uses. It is also possible that the basic internal combustion technologies developed in this program could be applied to other sizes of engines. That could have a major impact on industrial equipment and truck engine markets. It could also be important in using large coal-fueled engines for cogeneration systems and industrial uses. Page 14