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ISAFRT 2009
The first International Seminar on Alternate Fuels for Rail Traction (ISAFRT) is a Seminar devoted to examining the various Alternate Fuels for Rail Traction. The rising cost of fossil fuels coupled with the enormous pressures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have brought the Railways to face its biggest challenge yet - to find an energy efficient, effective and sustainable alternative to diesel oil and coal. Although rail is one of the most environmentally sustainable modes of transport, there a lot that can be done to reduce the impact of fossil fuels, especially with the operating margins under tremendous pressure with rising prices of fuel The Seminar shall try to address two crucial issues - short term challenges and a long term strategy by gathering experts from the rail industry, rolling stock manufacturers and fuel suppliers to tackle both the immediate and the long-term problems facing the rail industry in assessing the future source of power for rail traction. The Seminar promises to be an innovative forum for industry experts to share practical results from pioneering pilot-tests, research and a valuable meeting ground to exchange notes about the latest developments on the next step for rail fuel. A must for anybody connected with Rail. The Seminar is being jointly organised by The Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE), and the Indian Railways Organisation for Alternate Fuels (IROAF) IRIMEE which was established in 1888 as a Technical School of the East Indian Railway (EIR) is one of the oldest Institutes in India where an undergraduate course on Mechanical Engineering started in 1927. Based at Jamalpur in east India, it has been a strong proponent of the use of alternate fuels over Indian Railways. The Indian Railway Organisation of Alternate Fuels (IROAF) is the Indian Railway ministry department spearheading the railways’ foray into CNG and bio-fuels is based in New Delhi. Indian Railways, abbreviated as IR, is a Department of the Government of India, under the Ministry of Railways, and is tasked with operating the rail network in India. The Ministry is headed by a cabinet rank Railways Minister, while the Department is managed by the Railway Board. Indian Railways has a total monopoly on India's rail transport. It is one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting seventeen million passengers and more than two million tonnes of freight daily. IR is the world's largest commercial or utility employer, with more than 1.6 million employees. The railways traverse the length and breadth of the country; the routes cover a total length of more than 63,327 km (39,500 miles). As of 2008, IR owned about 225,000 wagons, 45,000 coaches and 8300 locomotives and ran more than 18,000 trains daily, including about 8,984 passenger trains and 9,387 goods trains. Electric and diesel traction constitute the principal modes of traction on IR. The share of traffic in terms of GTKMs and train kms. for different traction over the years is given in the following tables : 
The consumption of fuel /energy of the IR has been:  Alternate Fuel Initiative IR has taken steps to use alternate fuels i.e. Bio-diesel and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for running of Diesel locomotives and Diesel Electric Multiple Units (DEMUs). One DEMU has already been converted and is successfully running with the blend of CNG and diesel. To increase the use of bio-diesel and CNG on IR further, projects have been launched to install four bio-diesel plants and to convert 100 diesel based DEMUs into CNG based dual fuel DEMUs. The use of alternate fuels not only promises exciting prospects of energy security for the country in general and IR in particular, but is also helpful in reducing harmful emission such as unburnt hydrocarbons, oxide of sulphur and particulate matter. |
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Abstracts: November 28, 2008