The world’s economy is shifting toward greener technologies – far too late – and one part of that is changing what fuels we use to power our trains.
In North America, diesel fuel has powered trains for decades. For various reasons, electric trains aren’t common on this continent except in a few corridors, so trains have to carry their fuel with them.
One fuel that has been getting a lot of press these days is hydrogen. The idea is that you carry a tank of hydrogen with you, and combine the hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell to produce electricity, which is stored in batteries and used to drive the wheels. The rest of the locomotive is the same as a diesel-electric locomotive – electricity driving motors in the wheels to make the train “go”. Water is the only emission from the fuel cell.
Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) has received a lot of press for their hydrogen locomotive trials. In late 2020 they announced the conversion of one locomotive from diesel to hydrogen power – the “green barn” CP 1001. It contains Ballard fuel cells and Innisfail-based Bilton Weldon and Manufacturing has been working on converting the locomotives.
In late 2021 CP announced that another two locomotives would be converted, GP38-2 #1002 and a big AC4400CW (CP 9517 becoming CP #1003). CP 1002’s first movement was on March 21, 2023; 1003 is anticipated to be moving in September 2023. 1001 & 1002 were spotted in Minnesota on July 1 so they are ranging farther afield!
This summer, Réseau Charlevoix is operating a hydrogen-powered train on their route between Quebec City and Baie-Saint-Paul. The train is a two-car Coradia iLint set supplied by Alstom. Previously a pair of diesel multiple unit cars were operating on this line, and before that it was a set of bilevel passenger cars hauled by ex NBEC RS18s.
Hydrogen is only a truly “green” fuel when the process of making hydrogen is powered by renewable energy. There’s no point in making hydrogen using coal-generated electricity, for example. CP’s first hydrogen plant will be on site at their Calgary headquarters, powered by a 5 MW solar farm, and they are building another in Edmonton.
I think there is a good future in hydrogen powered locomotives in North America. It is handled similarly to diesel fuel, although there are significant safety concerns about hydrogen due to the high pressures involved, and flame and leak detection is a greater challenge than it is with propane, natural gas or diesel fuel.
I think hydrogen is going to be the only answer in some instances. Farm equipment as one example. Having a chore tractor around the farm yard running on battery power is no problem, but having machinery out in the field sometimes tens of miles from the yard is a huge problem! That is where I think hydrogen will come into play. The company JCB has developed an internal combustion engine very similar to a diesel that runs on hydrogen with the only bi product out the tail pipe being water. The machine would have a hydrogen tank similar to a diesel fuel tank. These hydrogen engines with the same displacements as the diesels are putting out similar specs so that is encouraging.
Of course you will need to produce hydrogen on a massive scale that is environment friendly and all the infrastructure that goes with storage, delivery and as you mentioned safety issues etc. Not something that is going to happen overnight!
For applications like farm equipment, I think you treat hydrogen much like you treat propane. It probably won’t come in a pipeline so you’ll have your own tank on site, topped up by a truck.
I’m encouraged to hear of this ICE powered by hydrogen. There are certainly challenges – this great article compares burning natural gas to hydrogen: https://www.powereng.com/library/6-things-to-remember-about-hydrogen-vs-natural-gas – but good engineering should overcome them.
I’m not sold on combustion, but I think hydrogen fuel cells hold promise. Selfishly I hope they work, since if we start stringing up wires everywhere getting good pictures is going to be near-impossible with support poles and overpass guards in the way. My suspicion is that what we’ll get is hydrogen and battery locomotives coupled together with overhead line/third-rail boost on steep grades (think Kicking Horse Pass or the Niagara Escarpment).
An interesting follow-up to the explosion problem: I was listening to an Aviation Week podcast discussing Airbus’s hydrogen proposals from…2021, I think. Apparently the US tried to use it as a jet fuel in the 1960s and were concerned about explosions, but found that no matter what they did they couldn’t get an explosion from a filled hydrogen fuel tank; it just dissipated too quickly. I emailed the editor who made that remark and he said he’d dig out the report later as he was on a business trip at the time. I never did hear back.
It doesn’t make sense to electrify everywhere. In transit there is a lot of talk of hybrid battery-electric buses, taking power from overhead wires on “main lines” and using their onboard battery on side streets. I like the idea but there are obviously engineering challenges to this approach.
That’s interesting about the hydrogen testing in the 1960s. I found this page that talks about NASA pump and tank testing with various fuels, including hydrogen. It’s mostly a series of links to the actual reports. https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/historic-facilities/rockets-systems-area/pumps-and-tanks/
I remember my early days as a business reporter and there was a huge buzz around Ballard, as their hydrogen fuel cells were seen as the next big thing. Without getting into the technological complexities you mentioned or the possible backroom machinations that *may* have kept this innovation from reaching its full market potential, I will merely say it’s unfortunate that, 23 years after first reading about this technology, it’s still not ready for prime time. The world desperately needs innovation to move past fossil fuels. My hope is the lag is due to the time to perfect the technology and not efforts by some dark cabal to keep it from hitting its true potential.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I can imagine there was some backroom pressure to retain the focus on fossil fuel development. It’s certainly happened before in many industries.
When I first joined the Meteorological Service of Canada (1958) I was posted to a couple Upper Air Observation stations operated by Transport Canada to take upper air observations by radio transmitters carried by hydrogen filled large ballon’s. We manufactured the hydrogen gas using chemical mixtures and water in a hydrogen generator. These balloons were released twice daily at 32 stations in Canada. Apparently this process was started around 1930s. We were trained to handling all processes of manufacturing this gas in a safe manner.
Hi Richard, thanks for sharing your experiences with the Meteorological Service of Canada. It makes sense that these weather / observation balloons were “powered by” hydrogen. The alternative is helium and it’s not as easily generated / collected.
I wonder what was in the allegedly Chinese balloons that made the news recently?
It is interesting that CP wants to use hydrogen locomotives to haul coal from the Elk Valley in southeastern BC. Those bright green locomotives will get blackened pretty fast, but hopefully, the testing will workout. I would think they would have to build a refuelling station in the area for these locomotives.
Something I haven’t heard yet (or found out) is what is the range of the hydrogen units compared to the diesels? Is it comparable or does one have an advantage over the other?
https://www.teck.com/news/news-releases/2023/teck-and-cpkc-announce-long-term-rail-agreement
I think hydrogen powered locomotives make sense in captive situations like this, where the trains literally go back and forth between fixed locations. You can build one fueling location and dedicate locomotives to the job.
Range is determined by energy density. One of the reasons why gasoline and diesel have been so popular is they pack a lot of energy in low volume & mass. I tried to find out whether hydrogen has an advantage over diesel in this regard, but I didn’t find anything definitive. In theory hydrogen has an advantage based on its molecule size, but the need for a thick pressure vessel and associated handling equipment counteracts that.
Practice will prove it out but my gut says that diesels will have more range than equivalent hydrogen-powered units.