Freight, Fuel, Love

December 13, 2015

GE Transportation Project

EDSGN 100 Section 023

Team Spunky: Zach Nabozny, Shiven Patel, Brandon Smith, Emily Vannatta

Executive Summary: The city of Pittsdelphia is looking for a cost-minimizing solution that will replace the existing Tier 2 locomotives in use currently. The solution criteria included satisfying stricter, Tier 4 EPA requirements by reducing NOx and PM emissions, maintaining or increasing freight capacity, and allowing the city to be revenue-neutral within 10 years. After considering several potential methods, we implemented an integrative solution of upgrading existing infrastructure, and turning to alternative fuels. This consisted of selling the 50 Tier 2 trains in exchange for 15 Tier 4 trains, and retrofitting the diesel engine for LNG injection (90% LNG/10% Diesel fuel). Our calculations resulted in emission reductions for NOx and PM of 1,140 tons/yr (76.36% reduction), and 43.45 tons/yr (80% reduction), respectively. Coupling this with an 81.8% increase in freight capacity (165,000 tons to 300,000 tons), the time to become revenue-neutral being 2.15 years, and public approval due to significant emission reductions, we determined our method of buying Tier 4 trains along with retrofitting the engine to use LNG/Diesel as alternative fuel to be a simple to implement, yet optimal solution to the problem Pittsdelphia is facing.

Introduction:

Currently, the citizens of Pittsdelphia are complaining of smog from locomotive emissions, and the existing locomotives are not meeting the new, EPA Tier 4 emission requirements.

Schedule for the Project:

The project was presented in the middle of October and we had just under two months to complete the whole thing. Our schedule was broken down into weekly sections and the goal was to complete a section of the project by the end of each week.

Week one: October 19-23-

o For the first week of the project, we wanted to focus on researching the project at hand, so background research on transportation methods, choosing a city to be our Pittsdelphia, and researching the different solutions to the problem.

Week two: October 26-30-

o For the end of the second week, our goal was to develop at least four solutions to the problem, and then decide which solution we felt would be the best by using our intuition and a decision matrix.

Week three: November 2-6-

o With our solution selected, by the end of the third week the goal was to further develop our concept and begin to design our “prototype” for the solution. With the prototype decided on, we would tweak it to the point that we were happy with, and then come up with the final design for the solution.

Week four: November 9-13-

o For week four, we should begin to develop our systems diagram for the solution chosen, and then finish up the concept of operations for the design. The system of operations and the concept of operations should be tweaked and how we want it by the end of this week.

Week five: November 16-20-

o Week five we will begin the cost analysis on the solution we have designed. The team will work together and look at the design from every aspect to ensure that we haven’t missed any hidden costs that would affect the outcome of the total cost for our design.

Week six: November 23-27-

o As long as we have followed the schedule thus far, then week six will be our week off, due to Thanksgiving break.

Week seven: November 30-December 4-

o For week seven, we will analyze the overall affect our solution will have on the public opinion. It is essential to our project that we have the support of the customers, because they are the customers in this situation. The analysis of public opinion won’t take long so we will also begin the presentation slides of our overall project, and aim to have this done by the end of the week so we are ready to present in the beginning of week 8.

Week eight: December 7-11 (PRESENTATIONS)

Zachs Part of Final Report:

To develop our concept we considered 5 main points that we wanted our solution to meet. They were cost, speed of delivery, reliability of delivery, environmental impact, and the public impact. Cost is extremely important in our society. Nobody enjoys spending more money for a service that can be done just as well, or even better at a cheaper price. As a businessman the bottom line is always considered and as an individual, you have a budget. The speed of delivery is key because of the old saying "time is money." In America, if the public wants something, they want it as soon as they can get it. The faster the better. If a company needs 50 ton of coal, and Company A can deliver it on Monday and Company B can deliver it on Thursday, then Company A will get the business. Reliability of delivery is a very important concept. We all look for reliability in people when making friends, businesses, products, and services. If we are continually ordering objects and they are constantly being lost in shipment, we get very upset and do not use that delivery service anymore. Also, if one delivery service always gives their word that the delivery process will only take 3 days and it continuously takes 5, then you lose your trust in the delivery service and switch to a different kind. Environmental impact was a key factor for this project. The social awareness of environmental issues can change the way the public looks at a company and affect its bottom line. We all have a responsibility of taking care of the planet on which we live. If two company are identical in cost, speed, and reliability, then the company who has the smallest environmental footprint will win the selection process because it reduces harm to the planet. Lastly, the public was factored into our project. We wanted to use a process that does not bother the public as much. For example, noise pollution was considered, as well as what the public would be in favor for.

First water travel was considered via ships. The cost to deliver freight and minerals we found to be not extremely cheap nor extremely expensive. It was about the same as the cost of shipping via railway. They charge per container rates. While weight can factor into the cost, it is mostly determined by volume. The cubic meter to be specific. For large, heavy objects, sea is usually one of the cheaper means of transportation, while warehousing fees at seaports can be excessively expensive. Using ships, is also a slow delivery process. Many sea shipments can

take a month to deliver. Although, technology is contributing to a faster delivery process for ships, and canals have created shorter shipping routes. Some ocean freight shipments can arrive as fast as 8 days. Ocean deliveries also tend to be unreliable. They are often off schedule which means the delivery could be backed up days or even weeks. Also, ocean lines often have weekly schedules to and from ports, so if something does not arrive at the port in time, it will already be delayed at least a week, until the next ship arrives that is going to your destination. Ocean travel has oil spills and can completely destroy water ecosystems, hurting the environment. Lastly, the public outlook on shipping via waterways is neutral because it does not affect day to day life or have large amounts of noise pollution.

Second, air delivery was considering using cargo planes. Air delivery tends to be the most expensive, however it depends on what is being delivered. Airlines charge by what is called "chargeable weight." This is described as a combination of weight and size of the shipment. As a shipment gets smaller the margin between sea and air travel come closer and closer together. Also, warehouse fees at airports are often cheaper than those of seaports. Air wins the speed of delivery hands down. They can deliver goods within a day or two. They also are usually more reliable than sea delivery. Although flights get delayed by weather and other factors, they are very on top of their schedules and are very precise with their times. Also, airlines have daily flights to and from major cities around the world so if something did not make it on a plane it was supposed to, it will not be delayed for long. Planes also have a large environmental footprint, releasing a lot of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and kill many birds on a year to year basis. Lastly, air travel has a negative effect on the public because of the significant amounts of noise pollution around airports.

Third, trucking the material was considered. Trucking the material is cheaper than delivering it by railway, but it is much slower. It also requires many more shipments because trucks cannot carry nearly the amount that a train could carry. It is also slower because there is unpredicted traffic, where as trains only have wide open rail. Trucking is proved just as reliable as railway but also may be lost on occasion of an automobile involving a truck carrying the necessary supplies. Trucks have much less emissions than trains, but since it requires many more trips, they tend to fall equal to trains. Lastly, they are neutral to the public, meaning they do not bother the public.

Alternate fueling was then considered, since it was significantly cheaper than any other solution because the only thing that needs done is a retrofit to the existing trains. The speed and reliability of deliveries would be neutral with the baseline train because it is still using the same method of delivery. This will stay the same. It is a positive for the environment because it

significantly reduces emissions which reduces greenhouse gases. This reduction keeps the environment healthy. Also, the public will stay neutral because once again it is using the baseline train to transport the material.

Aftertreatment upgrades, according to GE, costs $100,000 per train. Multiplying that value by the amount of trains in the fleet, which in this case is 50 trains, the company will spend $5 million in upgrades. These upgrades allow Tier 2 trains to reach Tier 3 emission values. Considering the fact that buying a new Tier 3 train costs $3 million per train and selling off Tier 2 trains averages about $1.25 million per train, aftertreatment is the most economical solution. The downside to this aftertreatment is it is only capable of getting the trains to reach Tier 3 emissions, while the project requires the trains to reach Tier 4 emissions. This is why aftertreatment cannot be considered as a serious solution because it costs $5 million and does not allow the train to reach the goal of Tier 4 emissions.

Aftertreatment is the process of catching the gases released from combustion and filtering them before they are exhausted into the atmosphere. The gases that aftertreatment catch are NO(x) and PM emissions. NO(x) emissions contributes to acid deposition, which harms, plants, waterways, animals, and structures. PM contributes to regional haze, smog, and other harmful effects from pollution. PM2.5 is specifically dangerous to the health of humans because it is so small (<2.5 microns) we are capable of inhaling it into our lungs and then it enters our blood stream. To reduce these emissions there are three popular methods. One of which is called lean NO(x) trap (LNT). LNT is a discontinuously operating system and works by storing NO(x) during lean engine operation, reducing NO(x) during rich operating phases, and desulfurization under rich conditions with high temperatures. LNT reduces the amount of oxygen during combustion because trains run rich when they are only partially loaded, which happens often, especially during light duty operations (“Particulate Matter and NOx Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems”). Allowing sensors to read when the train is running rich, significantly reduces NO(x) emissions specifically. Some downsides include, long-term stability, thermal aging, and sulfur poisoning. The other is a silicon-controlled rectifier or SCR technology. SCR technology reduces NO(emission) by using ammonia. This ammonia would then need to be generated on board because transporting ammonia is extremely frowned upon. Technological advancements has allowed for the development in a product called "Adblue" which is a urea/water solution that breaks down NO(x) emissions. The last method is a catalytic converter. The catalytic converter allows exhaust gasses to flow through the ceramic honeycomb structure that is coated in catalysts. The catalysts reduce NO(x) gases into N2 and O2 gases and oxidize CO into CO2 as well as oxidizes unburned hydrocarbons into CO2 and water (“How Catalytic Converters Work”).

(3 Way Catalytic Converter from www.meca.org)

Aftertreatment reduces the reliability of trains, by having maintenance issues. Aftertreatments filter exhaust gases which creates backpressure on the engine. This means that the exhaust gases are not being released as easily before, causing them to back up to an engine, causing it to work harder than before. This increased workload causes the engine to run at a hotter temperature than what it was designed to. The worst thing for an engine is excessive heat. This causes much more wear and tear on the engine causing more things needing repaired, causing trains to break down, or be out of commission for awhile until the necessary parts are shipped and replaced on the train. This not only causes the company more money for maintenance costs, but also could cause companies work for not having reliable equipment. Companies may even have to turn away orders because they do not have enough trains at the time to get the material delivered.

Upgrading the fleet of trains and using alternate fueling keeps cost and the speed of delivery neutral but increases reliability, environment, and the public outlook. The trains become more reliable because the mechanics and technologies in the trains are newer and also are built for the emission controls, allowing them to run smoothly. They reduce emissions and aid in the environment by keeping the harmful emissions from being exhausted into the atmosphere. The public enjoys this because it reduces health concerns for them and also helps animals and plants live longer, healthier lives. Due to the health benefits, pre-existing liquefaction plant, and EPA emission reductions, we pursued an integrative solution of upgrading infrastructure of the trains to Tier 4, and switching to using a combined alternative fuel source of Diesel/Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

Final Concept

Our team’s final selection ended up being a combination of a Tier 2 selloff and acquisition of Tier 4 locomotives combined with the fitment of a dual-fuel Diesel/LNG retrofit system. This system didn’t require as much research into the logistics of moving goods, as the same operation essentially remained in place. The special needs of this specific system required us to analyze the region of Savannah, mainly on the availability of the natural gas liquefaction plant located on Elba island, which is within a close proximity to the city. Having the ability to ignore that $1 Billion cost, we then focused on how to implement the design change itself. Our first problem that followed was transporting the fuel on the locomotive itself. As the energy density of LNG is 60% that of diesel fuel, increased fuel space is indeed an obvious requirement. Compressed natural gas is not even an option here, as the energy density of that would require such a large amount of fuel space that it would make a project such as this unfeasible. Using liquefied natural gas posed its own problems, namely its boiling point of -260 degrees Fahrenheit. Fortunately, the industry has been dabbling in this technology for a few years now, and has since designed a LNG fuel tender, which unassumingly looks like a standard oil tender. This unit costs $1 million, but can fuel two locomotives attached in tandem. It is a 20,000 gallon LNG tender, constructed of a containment cylinder inside a structural cylinder, separated by vacuum for insulation. Also of good news is the fact that these fuel tenders can be refueled in about the same amount of time it would take for the locomotive to refuel with diesel, so as to not impede productivity by refueling both simultaneously. Our final design is a concept very similar to Canadian National’s experimental diesel/LNG freight locomotive pictured below.

(Canadian National Diesel/LNG locomotive)

With our design finalized, we moved into cost analysis. We wanted to know exactly what such a transition would cost, as we all know money talks. Before going into the actual calculations, we had some background information to ascertain. A large motivator of our decision was the attractive price of natural gas per BTU, which is expected to be at least one-third the price of diesel until at least 2040. This is due to the increase in the availability of accessible natural gas in the U.S. as hydraulic fracturing technology makes such deposits exploitable. Also, pulled from the information that GE presented us with at the outset, dual fuel technology in its current state can only allow for 50% fuel savings, largely attributed to the necessity of using diesel as the pilot fuel. Also, our specific scenario applied a few parameters and numbers which we’ve used. The specifics are posted in the appendix, but we’ve calculated that each locomotive used $31,912 worth of fuel per trip. As far as selling off our existing fleet and purchasing GE’s Tier 4 locomotive, we found that would put us in the hole about $137.5 Million. The total cost of retrofitting each locomotive added $50 million onto our debt. However, considering our fuel costs would be halved, it allowed for a yearly fuel cost savings of $87 Million. This yearly savings created a return-on-investment timeframe of 2.15. If this seems relatively soon, that’s because the data we’re constrained to use is a little skewed from national averages, specifically the per-locomotive annual mileage. The number we calculated as its annual mileage was 182,500 miles, which is three times the national average for the freight rail industry, which is 60,000 miles. If this were implemented in the real world, one would be looking at a payoff of around six to seven years versus two.

Transportation via Water:

Transportation using the bodies of water around Savannah, Georgia is one of the transportation methods we considered for our project. The Savannah River runs along the West coast of Georgia, and the Atlantic Ocean is directly south of the city. For our purposes the rivers and canals would be used, so we would need smaller boats to ship the freight. If we used the rivers, the cost would be very low due to the fact that the “tracks” are simply the water, so no building or upkeep costs would be added into the overall cost of our solution. However, the canals would increase the cost more than we would like to see. The upkeep cost of canals becomes very expensive, very fast.

One advantage of using water as a method of transportation is that they can carry much larger amounts of cargo than alternate shipping methods. Shipping the cargo using water transportation is also very unreliable in terms of the speed of delivery. The speed of delivery is much slower than that of a plane, trucks, or the trains already being used. Another large problem with transportation via water is that the pollution created by the boats is very large. The diesel engines burn very large amounts of sulfur content fuel oil (bunker oil), which releases sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, particulates, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydro carbons in to the atmosphere. One of the goals of our design is to reduce the amount of these gases, so shipping via water does not seem like the most viable option we have for the transportation of cargo to and from the city of Savannah, Georgia. (http://business.tenntom.org/why-use-the-waterway/shipping-comparisons/)

Citations Used:

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/catalyticconverters.htmlhttp://www.meca.org/resources/twc_w_ceramic_substrates.pnghttps://www.autohausaz.com/html/emissions-oxygen_sensors.htmlhttp://www.fev.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Media/TechnicalPublications/Diesel_Systems/ParticulateMatterAndNOxExhaustAftertreatmentSystems.pdfhttps://rbnenergy.com/the-trains-they-are-a-changin-will-new-tank-car-standards-stifle-crude-by-rail-part-2https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/air_quality/publications/effects_of_freight_movement/chapter04.cfmhttp://www.railwayage.com/index.php/mechanical/locomotives/experts-weigh-in-on-lng.html

http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/rail-companies-eye-lng-powered-engines-amid-high-diesel-costhttp://www.westport.com/news/2013/cn-railway-orders-four-lng-tenders-westport-launches-new-product-serve-natgas-needs-railroad-markethttp://hhpinsight.com/rail/2012/10/cn-progress-on-lng-trains/http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_17.html