Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) – Future fuel for Locomotives of Indian Railways

In a move to adopt environment friendly and cost effective alternate fuel, the Indian Railways has taken up various projects on utilization of natural gas as fuel for its fleet of diesel locomotives. Under this, Research Design & Standard Organisation (RDSO), a research wing of the Ministry of Railways based at Lucknow, is actively working on development of a prototype of locomotive based on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Once the prototype is proven on field, Indian Railways plan to build another 20 LNG based locomotives on the same concept. With the introduction of such technology, there is going to be 50% reduction in operating cost of locomotives 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 like NOx etc. 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 tons and therefore commercially feasible. At present, Indian Railways are running its fleet of locomotives on predominantly two fuels, i.e. diesel and electricity. Prices of both these fuels have been rising rapidly due to increasing prices of crude oil/imported coal, devaluation of Rupee etc. Natural gas is emerging as a promising fuel of the future. This natural gas is availablein the form of conventional natural gas, shale gas, gas hydrates etc. With 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 1241 billion cubic metres of conventional gas, 7462.5 billion cubic metres of recoverable shale gas reserves and 1890 trillion cubic metres of gas hydrates. USA 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 setting-up on the east and west coasts of India, all with railway connectivity.