(The following report was posted on January 13 at www.fuelcelltoday.com.)
In order to eliminate harmful emissions in tunnels as well the opportunity to be the first customer to install a fuel cell in a large locomotive, the New York City Transit Authority has agreed to allow ABBA Corporation, Guilford,CT to manage the removal of a diesel engine and retrofit the 50 ton locomotive with a 250 kW fuel cell. The only byproducts of a fuel cell are water vapor and heat as opposed to the combustion byproducts of diesel engines.
The partners in this project are ABBA Corporation, Guilford,CT; Vehicle Projects, Denver, CO; Nuvera Fuel Cells, Cambridge, MA; Motors& Controls International, Hazleton, PA.
Mr. Ron Johnson, Vice President, ABBA Corporation said that this project has been developed over the past two years and recently a small 4 ton locomotive powered by a 14 kW fuel cell has been produced, tested and accepted for the gold mining industry. It was proven that the technology will work reliably and safely underground. “This is the same technology, only larger” Johnson said.
After a six month engineering study, the fuel cell will be manufactured, installed and tested in railroad operations. Within 4 years, the cost of the fuel cell is expected to be the same or less than the diesel engines now in hundreds of thousands of locomotives used worldwide.
Johnson mentioned there will be a large demand for inexpensive methods of hydrogen production for vehicles in the near future and one Connecticut company, Proton Energy, Wallingford,CT is leading the field in hydrogen production through electrolysis. Since the transit system has 600 Volt DC power available through the third rail systemwide, that would be a natural power source for hydrogen fuel production. The project will be completed by 2005.