The return of the steam locomotive

[mos6507]

There is some work being done now to create true serial hybrid trains with batteries onboard to capture the regen. The same concept would work for pure electric trolleys.

[criticalmass]

Regen is kind of useless in locomotives it seems. Hopefully, this is where supercapacitors will come in extremely handy in the near future.

Kind of difficult to beat electric power for sheer efficiency, isn't it?

Still, I'm like an 8 year old when I get the chance to even touch a steam locomotive. The Baldwins were my favorites and I've been studying them very closely in the event I ever need to power something with steam.

[Bytesmiths]

There is some work being done now to create true serial hybrid trains with batteries onboard to capture the regen.

I sure would like to see a reference -- got any?

This just doesn't make sense to me. You'd need about 100 times the battery as you have in a typical electric car, for the same driving range of 50-100 km.

On the other hand, if you have an electric train system, you have someplace you can feed the energy -- no batteries needed.

Rather than put all that money into batteries, why don't they simply adapt the system to electricity? The wires over the track could be connected to the national grid, so that trains going downhill could put electricity into the grid, and all-electric trains -- no diesel at all -- could run off of wind/hydro/solar (or coal).

Hopefully, this is where supercapacitors will come in extremely handy in the near future.

That would be nice, but people have been working on these for a long time. Do you have any references for recent breakthrough research?

This seems to me like "denial" thinking -- if we only are smart enough, we'll escape Peak Oil somehow.

[criticalmass]

Ultracapacitors "Supercapacitors" already exist. They just don't store energy in the manner that batteries do. (Les Ah, more flexibility) What they can do is store a large, readily available charge to provide power for the trip back up the hill. The major advantage: smaller, lighter, and they can charge and discharge rapidly. Ultracapacitors can also cycle thousands more times than batteries. So where you could only capture a fraction of charge from regen with a battery pack, ultracapacitors could capture almost all of the regen quickly and dump the power right to the electric motors the moment it is needed for a big surge.

[Blacksmith]

Bill Lear of Lear Jet fame in his later years worked on an external combustion engine for a while. I don't know the specifics but I know they could never achieve the efficiency of the internal combustion engine.

[Bytesmiths]

Ultracapacitors "Supercapacitors" already exist.

And they have a long way to go in order to be practical. Their energy density is only about 1/5,000th that of diesel or gasoline. That means that the travelling range you'd get from just 100 kilograms of diesel will require 500 tons of ultracapacitors.

When I was a practising EE in the '70's and '80's, ultracapacitors were not much different than they are now, which leads me to dis-believe that they're going to get 5,000 times better any time soon.

The major advantage: smaller, lighter...

Simply untrue, by a factor of 125 (compared to lithium-ion batteries), or 2,380 (compared to diesel fuel), according to WikiPedia.

It's not that I don't think they should be studied, researched, and improved, but today's versions are no magic bullet, and tomorrow's versions that would do all the wonderful things you claim aren't even on the drawing board.

[vaseline2008]

There is some work being done now to create true serial hybrid trains with batteries onboard to capture the regen. The same concept would work for pure electric trolleys.

Here's the GE Locomotive Website. Enjoy.

GE Locomotives

GE Hybrid Locomotive PDF Link