Title - Railways considering use of LNG as fuel for locomotives

New Delhi: Indian Railways has taken up various projects on utilisation of natural gas as fuel for its fleet of diesel locomotives. The move aims at adopting environment-friendly and cost-effective alternate fuel.The Research Design & Standard Organisation (RDSO), a research wing of the Ministry of Railways based at Lucknow, is working on development of a prototype of locomotive based on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).Once the prototype is proven on field, the Railways plans to build 20 LNG-based locomotives. The technology will help 50 per cent reduction in operating cost of locomotive even at the current enhanced LNG prices.In addition, there is an elimination of visible smoke from these locomotives and significant reductions in other regulated and unregulated emissions. Once Indian Railways switches over completely to natural gas as fuel for its diesel locomotives, it would amount to only 2.2% of India’s annual natural gas consumption of 81 million tonne and will, therefore, be commercially feasible.At present, Indian Railways is running its fleet of locomotives on predominantly two fuels — diesel and electricity. Prices of both these fuels have been rising rapidly due to increasing prices of crude oil/imported coal, devaluation of rupee.

Natural gas is emerging as a promising fuel of the future and LNG being available in the form of conventional natural gas, shale gas, gas hydrates, the introduction of economical processes of extraction of shale gas, exploitation of shale gas reserves has become a commercial reality. India also has substantial reserves of natural gas in the form of conventional natural gas, shale gas and gas hydrates. According to an estimate, India has 1,241 billion cubic metres of conventional gas, 7462.5 billion cubic metres of recoverable shale gas reserves and 1,890 trillion cubic metres of gas hydrates. The US and Canada have become the world’s highest exporters of natural gas on account of their shale gas reserves. To make use of global reserves of natural gas, India is setting up infrastructure for import of LNG into the country. Even LNG terminals are in various stages of set-up on the east and west coasts of the country, all with rail connectivity.