CNG Replaces Diesel Fuel in Locomotives

Introduction to the Industry

Major railroads in North America collectively burn approximately 5 BILLION gallons of diesel fuel annually principally for use in freight service diesel-electric locomotives. Railroads are classified by revenue and the largest are Class 1. CNGmotive’s commercial offers addresses the cost of railroading in North American at the apex of the challenge. The largest two cost factors routinely reported by Class 1 railroads are labor/HR cost and fuel cost. The price of oil at times has made fuel the #1 cost for railroads, reaching >20% of revenue in some instances.

Railroads have few commercial advantages in addition to cost of transport to the shipper. They very seldom are more timely, more reliable or more flexible than competitive modes of freight movement, such as highway trucks. This is most clearly revealed in the most competitive segment of traffic, standardized intermodal freight containers. The container is interoperable across truck and rail shipment. The competition to win intermodal business centers primarily on cost. Most shipping is done by third party logistics entities who guarantee to the ultimate customer (FEDEX, UPS, etc.) timely and reliable delivery for a fixed price. If the underlying mode of shipment is compromised, the freight container business can be diverted onto trucking very quickly. Very often the penalties for failure are extremely steep, loss of the business being a major one. To make money in intermodal operation and other segments of railroading, cost and reliability are paramount and thus low fuel cost is essential.

Significant attention is being paid to natural gas in North America as there are abundant supplies at very low cost in the short and long term. The conventional wisdom is that LNG is the only alternative for heavy duty users such as railroads and as such LNG pilot programs began a few years ago. CNGmotive has the ability to deliver compressed natural gas (CNG) with fill time and capacity performance of its LNG competitors, at a fraction of the cost.

Technical Advantages

CNGmotive has the proprietary and exclusive ability to economically fill tenders in times similar to diesel. This factor allows CNGmotive the unique ability to offer the inherent advantages of CNG without the long held paradigm of extended filling times for CNG. Railroads had previously dismissed CNG in mainline operations due to the issues now solved by the CNGmotive exclusive technology and engineering achievements. CNGmotive’s >3yr market development experience in CNG for railroads makes it now technically obvious that its designs and processes enable CNG adoption by Class 1 RR’s in NA.

Conventional wisdom held that filling pressure vessels was limited by physics to be a very slow process requiring many hours to accomplish. The patented Chill Fill ® technology has obliterated that long held belief. There is multiyear successful application of the Chill Fill ® technology in the oilfield and industrial virtual pipeline markets and CNGmotive is the sole licensee of this IP for locomotive fueling applications. Since the process has been used in multiple applications both smaller and soon to be applications much larger than tenders, there is little to no technical risk of failure to meet the performance of refilling as outlined. One of the founders is the principle inventor of Chill Fill ® and has founded a number of companies and applications of the IP outside the rail world.

The second underpinning is a safe and crashworthy design for a tender which preserves the value of the fuel cost advantage to the end customer by being well adapted to the application. CNGmotive has executed two size classes of tenders already. These design efforts have been led by a founder, a former senior executive in the General Motors locomotive business and by the former key designer of General Motors locomotive vehicles. The output of this team are designs which far exceed the anticipated safety regulations and still provide the ultimate customer excellent interoperability and compatibility.

The effective use of tenders is most often envisioned as placement between two locomotives in consist.  The term “in consist” is railroad speak for locomotives hooked together and being controled from a single cab on one of the units.  This is a highly effective way for locomotives to be employed in multiples and is virtually certain to be the way locos are seen together at the head of a train or else where in the train or at the end of a train.  In the CNGmotive team’s long experience with both tender design and locomotive design we have understood the requirements for a vehicle to operate safely and economically goes far beyond the safe and economic delivery of cng.  One of the key elements of this “in consist” tender is to have the key track-train characteristics very similar to locomotives.  Most commonly cited are vehicle weight and bogie configuration.  The illustration below shows how the CNGmotive tender maintains appropriately heavy weight to be a stable consist partner to modern locomotives.  Illustrated also is the typical situations for Liquified Natural Gas tenders which have an empty weight generally far below the minimum to assure stable operation “in consist”.