JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — We can all breathe a little easier thanks to Larry Biess, according to the Florida Times-Union.
The 38-year-old engineer at Jacksonville’s CSX Transportation Inc. invented a device that cuts down the amount of emissions produced by idling train locomotives. Earlier this month, he and the railroad were recognized for the invention by the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration.
Railroad locomotives typically idle 50 percent to 65 percent of the time to keep their fluids warm and batteries charged. But three years ago, Biess, who is now a six-year CSXT employee, questioned the longtime practice when walking through a railyard in Cumberland, Md.
“I heard all these locomotives idling,” he said, “I thought, ‘Why is this?'”
It was because few questioned the practice even though idling cost about 8,000 gallons of fuel per locomotive, per year.
So Biess came up with an auxiliary power unit that automatically shuts down the main locomotive engine while maintaining other systems. In addition to saving the company nearly $30 million a year in diesel fuel costs, Biess’ invention is projected to reduce locomotives’ nitrous oxide emissions by 92 percent while idling.
CSXT plans to equip 3,000 of its 3,600 locomotives with the new system, nearly 800 this year alone. The railroad, which is the third largest in the United States, has several patents pending on the device, and other railroads are either buying the units or testing them.
Biess, whose background is in nuclear power, was surprised that no one questioned the idling of engines before he proposed his money-saving and breath-saving idea.
“It seems like an obvious solution,” he said. “I thought there must be a reason it hasn’t been tried. It’s just the way things had always been done.”