Diesel-Electric Locomotive Energy Recovery and Conversion

This report explores efforts to optimize Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) technologies for minimally invasive retrofitting of large internal combustion engines equipping locomotives. WHR technologies aim at recovering at least a portion of the high grade wasted thermal energy and converting it to useful power, resulting in lower fuel consumption and pollutant emissions. The project was focused on the analysis of WHR technologies performance against averaged locomotive duty cycles. Two stages addressed technical and economic aspects. Stage 1, “Commuter Rail Locomotive Baseline Data Collection & Computer Modeling”, was dedicated to obtaining experimental data from locomotives equipped with the Electro Motive Division (EMD) 16-645-E3 engine operating at different notch numbers. Based on a set of thermodynamic assumptions, a computer model was developed to predict the potential power recovered by retrofitting the EMD 16-645-E3 with WHR technologies. Stage 2 “Installation Test and Analysis” was dedicated to the development of a laboratory scale exhaust gas simulator to validate the results of the computer model.