USA: Innovative Rail Technologies has converted two industrial shunting locomotives used at United States Steel Corp’s Edgar Thomson and Clairton sites from diesel to battery power using its Advanced Technology Li-Ion Adaptive System turnkey propulsion and control package.
This is intended to reduce fuel consumption and airborne particulate matter, and demonstrate the use of emerging technology to help the steel company reach its goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
US Steel has invested more than $2·3m in the project, with further funding from Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Marine & Rail Freight Movers air quality improvement grant programme
‘Mon Valley Works is the first industrial site to deploy this technology to reduce small particulate matter emissions from its locomotive fleet’, said Scott Buckiso, Senior Vice-President & Chief Manufacturing Officer at US Steel when the locos were unveiled on October 30.
IRT Principal Ira Dorfman said ’battery propulsion technology is already in use throughout many modes of transportation, and rail transportation is the next step’.
