Oil Firing

That may be the question - but it needs answering properly and intelligently, not in "we've always done it this way" terms. It also needs answering in terms of volume and cost, as the answer may not be the same mix as today.

As for quality, notice that I've not said anything about where it should be produced. There's a whole different set of questions about where things are made, and what the trade offs are between getting stuff done locally and importing it

 

David, do you own and drive, or have you ever driven a motor car?

 

I don't understand the this question. I'm not aware of ethylene being the basis of glycol but ethylene glycol is most definitely used as an anti-freeze solution. I have never heard of it being used as a fuel but would like to know more.

To forestall your next question, yes I own and drive a car, was a mechanic for twenty-five years and have an honours degree in automobile engineering, but am always keen to increase my knowledge base.

 

Glycol will certainly burn. However, using it as a fuel to get rid of waste bumps into two immediate problems. One is that it will come diluted with water. The bigger one is that the volumes of waste you’d have available will be too low to make it viable to manage the inevitable issues you’d encounter going from idea to robust process.

Tom

 

Many things will burn but that doesn't make them suitable for use as fuels, hence "I have never heard of it being used as a fuel." I'm not sure how much of it you'd need to take a 300 ton train ten miles or so, or where you'd get it from. Personally, I can't see it catching on.

 

Yes, but it isn't a diesel (actually a petrol hybrid) and I'm not an expert on diesels - in truth I know next to nothing about them other than was taught in heat engines class 60 odd years ago.
The question was about diesels not small petroleum powered cars

 

Ethylene glycol is a hydrocarbon with two alcohol (OH) bonded to it. Pure EG has similar ignition temperature to Jet A1/Kerosene/diesel. I know it is used in antifreeze, but questioned if it is diluted with water. I believe Omaha has 2 liquid fuel takes, so different fuels could be used. If the antifreeze is not contaminated, and you chose to replace in your diesel fleet once a year, you may have enough for filling one or two tanks. That could save a bit of cash on the normal liquid fuel. Many questions to answer before you know if it could be done. It is an idea to consider, but I suspect that water contamination will probably mean this will not happen.

 

It is a very long time since I made up any ethylene glycol-based antifreeze, and if I remember correctly it was only about 10/v/v in water - if memory serves me correctly that would be about 20% proof, which I don't believe is regarded as flammable - I don't think anyone would try to burn anything containing so much water!. Neat ethylene glycol probably could be used as fuel, but I wonder how its price and taxation status would compare with oil.

 

The point I was trying to make, but made so much better here!

 

Ethylene glycol is very hygroscopic and thus absorb water readily. Unless you are careful with storage, it will quickly gain a significant water content, which isn't good for combustion.

 

Agree only to a limited extent. The idea of keeping open one small European mine to supply high-quality coal for heritage steam engines is attractive. And given the popularity of heritage steam with the general public, the argument is surely winnable that retaining one small heritage sector, whose machines rather occasionally burn a little coal, is an utterly negligible factor in the fight against climate change. We are winning that argument at the moment.

However, that leaves two reasons against. The first is fire risk from coal fired locomotives (working hard, as we always like to demonstrate). The other and even greater issue is economics. How much would such a supply from one European mine cost, especially after transport costs are added?

I’m not going to comment on the utility of such a mine for steel production as I don’t know who is right on that one! (Though I suspect that if no coal at all was available, the existing electric furnace technology could be modified to produce steels of all required qualities; though it might cost more of course).

Generally some of the debate up-thread is missing the economic factor. Yes, oil firing can be made to work (and indeed has certain advantages besides the fire-risk thing). Its trials, followed by abandonment (at any scale) in the UK was all driven by economics - the cost of the fuel, plus in the fifties, Governmental balance of payments considerations when all oil fuel had to be imported. In that earlier era, plentiful coal supplies were being mined in the UK; such coals were available not far from the points of use; and the railways were well set up with all the necessary infrastructure to transport and use coal. Another consideration at Government level (also a PR concern for railway companies) was the need to support jobs in the UK mining industry.

 

I don't profess to be an expert on coal firing, oil firing or whatever, but it's very apparent that the use of coal for anything at all will disappear, apart from those countries that will continue to to use it for the foreseeable future to generate unlimited amounts of cheap electricity for the benefit of their own countries-but that arguement is for another day. However, I would like to throw this into the ring-what about using LPG to fire steam locomotives??Reasonably easily stored, easily controlled, clean burning- (no smoke) -yes boilers would have to be modified a bit and tendrers modified to include an LPG tank. So, come on, you experts, would LPG firing be feasible?

 

I had a discussion with someone the other day, not on gas firing but on burning smokeless fuel. The big problem with both is the lack of smoke. The fireman has very little to tell him how well he is firing. Just three gauges:- the gauge glass, the pressure gauge and the smoke at the chimney. the first two are obvious but the latter probably less so to those not used to life on the footplate. If you have too little air you end up with black smoke. If you have too much you end up with no smoke. Either way you are sending energy up the chimney, either in the form of unburnt carbon or in heat energy lost in warming up the unwanted air. In an ideal world you want the stoichiometric ratio between fuel and air to be 1 but that results in no smoke so you don't know whether you have it just right or way too much air. With a light grey smoke at the chimney, you've not got combustion perfect but youare pretty close to it.
With gas or oil firing, it is possible to match fuel and air in a burner so that it is just right. That's how commercial burners work. For the most part such burners are fixed output but you can get modulating burners that will give you some turndown ratio. When I was involved with burners, a turndown ratio of about 4 to 1 was the best you could get; it might be better now. All this control of the burner can only be achieved by having a design package that matches air input to fuel input and that requires a modulating air supply which comes from an electrically driven fan. The modulation can be by varying fan speed or by dampers but both require a power supply and a control system. You can't use the blast from the chimney to provide the air with gas like you can with coal or oil because the mixing of gas and air has to come before the point of ignition. (Think of a Bunsen burner and where it gets its air from or even your gas hob.)
So, yes, you could have gas firing but you wolud neen a generator and a sophiticated control system and no blastpipe fulling unwanted air into the combustion chamber.

 

The idea is to convert iron oxide ore to steel directly with hydrogen from windmills etc.
This also makes blast furnaces superfluous.
I think but am not sure.

 

There are no arguments to be won on climate change. We are enduring the fifth heatwave this summer and France has had similar weather for the last two summers. Angouleme's average summer temperature used to be 25degC, When will the penny drop for us humans? Expanding Heathrow and Gatwick, drilling in the North Sea again? The government is planning to spend £Bn250 on carbon capture, a technology that no one has so far been able to be made to work. Net zero by 2050? We've missed the bus already, the battle has probably already been lost!

Ethylene Glycol's feed material is coal in some countries! Electric arc furnaces can only be used for recycling scrap steel; they cannot be used for iron ore. For iron ore hydrogen-fired furnaces are required but green hydrogen production is inefficient and therefore costly. So non=green hydrogen would likely be substituted which would somewhat destroy the whole purpose. The NYMR have the answer for steam locomotives - oil firing with rapeseed oil. In France 141R840 uses Durtal 600, a byproduct of paper production with a very aromatic exhaust!

 

And if temperatures are rising and crop yields falling, how do we feed people if we use crops for fuel? There’s more to sustainability than CO2 and climate.

 

This is the common methodology these days: here is the problem; this solution will fix it. People don't then move to the next stage: what new problems will this solution generate? And are these new problems worse than the original one? And how do we fix these?

Simple solutions do not work for complex situations. Nor does wishful thinking.

 

Not to forget that this discussion on biofuels has been running for 20 years or more.

 

Indeed nor does the short-termism of political cycles work, our political leaders (of all colours) thinking in terms of 5 years and no further is a massive part of the problem.

 

There are biofuels available generated from food production waste. (i.e. not competing with actual food production, but using the by-products)
For example; the FIA World Endurance Championship runs on fuels generated with waste material from the wine industry.

The big issue however is that there will never be enough such waste to go around, and it's only really viable for those willing to pay a premium to say they're sustainable.