Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well I'm in over my head. No one told me trying to keep my footprint. Smile was harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head. What do I really need? Trying to save the planet over someone, please save me, trying to save the planet over someone. Please save me.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome lean over my head. I'm Michael. Bartz just a quick note that all our transportation interviews were conducted over the phone. So the audio quality isn't at a studio level. Hopefully your ear can get accustomed to it and you'll still enjoy the great conversations. My guest today is Dr. Nirmal Gnanapragasam. Nirmal is a senior process and modeling scientist for the Canadian nuclear laboratories and his areas of expertise include hydrogen and electricity infrastructure, assessment, and planning. Welcome to in over my head, Dr. Ngos, how are you, Mike? I'm good. How are you? Good. So I brought you on to talk about rail travel and its role and sustainable transportation with the vast distances between cities traveling in Canada often means driving or flying. And I'm wondering if rail travel is a more environmentally friendly way to get places and how it fits into the larger picture of sustainable transportation. So to begin with how does rail travel compare to other forms of transportation? When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions being
Speaker 3 (01:19):
A mass transit system, especially for passengers. Rail can definitely contribute to reducing green gas footprint, especially the per copy of footprint can be reduced. If you take urban symptoms in Canada, especially Toronto, or the greater Toronto area, or the Montreal of Vancouver trains have shown that more people can become the, or with the same amount of fuel because when they design the trains, they take into consideration all that aspect. So rather than using your cars and, and personal vehicles, trains can help reduce Greeno gas missions significantly. But in terms of the statistics currently, it, it contributes to about 1% of the Greeno gas emissions for role of Canada, but then the passenger traffic or transport mode, rail contribution is significantly lower compared with other modes of transport. And that tells you a picture of where Canada is at the moment. So the rail passenger count is much smaller than other modes of transport in
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Canada. Yeah. So 1%, or, or less than 1% for personal travel, that's, that's a lot lower than maybe I thought it might have been with that. I'm assuming that's just because more people get around in cars or they fly, or as opposed to taking a, a, a train. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
So with, within the passenger transport mode, yes. So one per less than one person for rail is, is very mall. And that tells us that more people are using personal vehicles. I'm not sure of I, I don't have the number on top of mail for air travel, but it could be significant for passenger transport. On the other hand, rail is about 10% of freight traffic in Canada. So that tells you that currently rail is more used for freight than past your moon.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah. And I think that's, that's pretty obvious to anyone who, who lives in Canada, that a lot of the trains are being used for freight, as opposed to personal travel, especially here in the west, people don't travel by rail to get between cities. Do you see that changing in the future?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
It could, depending on how the, the government sort of flight in place passengers to come on board. And I think the anger generation is very keen on environmental impacts to the planet. And, and if they take that to a personal level and say, I want to contribute to reducing emissions, taking public transport is easiest. And first step you can do to minimize your Greeno footprint. And if you're living in cities, you are probably already doing it by taking subways or other, other buses and other modes of transport. But if you are living in these suburbs and if you're using personal vehicles, you could still think about shifting to rail in the future. And one of the implications there is currently there is positive fuel for all modes of transport going forward in the future. When we start using electricity through batteries or hydrogen or other means the effort and the natural resource used in generating clean electricity is going to sort of be a driver for requesting people to move into more of public transport and more efficiency aspect.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
And the reason is currently the fossil fuels are very low cost because it's produced in large quantities and there's a huge infrastructure available. But if you look at electricity grids across the country, in each province, the, the electricity price is sort of higher for cleaner grids because it takes that much investment to generate clean and electricity. At least currently in the future, the clean electricity prices, we go down as the technologies evolve, as there is more adoption and all the clean transport modes, whether it's passengers in battery cars, as well as rail and, and aviation, they will all depend on electricity as the main driver who make these fuels. And then that will help us switch away from the causal carbon fuels. With that context in the future, people will be motivated to use public transport, especially rain, because that improves the overall efficiency of the transport system. And by not using your personal vehicles, you are allowing that extra electricity available for rail and other, other modes of transport that are much needed.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
And of course, when we're talking about electricity and the grid, it's, it's also where we get those power sources from, right? So again, here in Alberta, we're mostly powered by coal. So the electricity is coming from coal. So if that's changing, then definitely those electrical forms of transportation will be more environmentally friendly.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Currently your, your vehicles are using fossil fuels or they're, they're using the end products of fossil fuels. And that's the drivers in the future. Electricity will be the main driver for some of these transport options. Mm-Hmm .
Speaker 2 (06:15):
And speaking about those more sustainable forms of, of fuel your work involves research in hydrogen power, and some trains are being powered by hydrogen, and this is being advertised as a green or alternative. So tell me more about how hydrogen can power a train, right?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
So if you are aware of the current propulsion systems on board range, diesel is used as the it's used as a fuel on an onboard generator and the onboard generator generates electricity and the electricity drive the profession motors in the locomotive. So with hydrogen, we would replace that diesel generator with hydrogen fuel cell and the fuel cell, the electrochemical cell. It doesn't have any moving components. You send hydrogen and air as the feed, they both react and there's electricity produce as a result. And so the electricity is now sent through again, some smaller batteries for buffering the power and the batteries up by the, to the action motors. And the byproduct from the fuel cells is water because hydrogen complains with oxygen in the air and arms water. So the, the hydrogen itself, the greener hydrogen, at least it's made from water and that the fuel cells, you are getting that water back. So that's what makes hydrogen more attractive for the industry, because from a resource stand, what is the main feed stock apart from electricity, and you get that water back when you start using it in fuel cells. And so we call it the closed cycle fuel system, your entire feed stock is now recycled. And the only driver within that system is electricity. So the diesel engine is replaced for it, the hydrogen fuel. So, so that's how crane is powered
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Mm-Hmm . And, and so that sounds like a, a much more environmentally friendly source of fuel. Does it have the same efficiency in power? Cause I know diesel is quite an efficient source of fuel.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
So the diesel current they're used in internal combustion engines. So the efficiency varies within between 30 to 33%. So that's what we call the thermal conversion efficiency for fuel cells. You are looking at from 50 to 50% energy or the thermal energy efficiency, but because the fuel cells, there is no combustion involved because it's an L process. It is much more efficient and hence it doesn't have the same losses that the internal condition engines
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Are. So it, so it is more more efficient. And so generally let's say in Canada are rail services adopting hydrogen power.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So at this point again, maybe I can go back to the study we did in 2018 Metro links, which operates the go trains in front, the greater Toronto area. They initiated a facility study on studying hydrogen as a fuel for their fleet. And there was three companies involved and one of them is our company. And in that study, we learned quite a bit about what parts of the hydrogen technologies ready for deployment and which ones are not ready. And at that time in Canada, there were there were no locomotive manufac is available to get the trains rolling. For example, I, I think the, the first launch of hydrogen power trains was in Germany around that time. So 2018, 19, they were trailing that train. They brought in karate island so that the model it's fully run on hydrogen fuel and the current.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
So these doing passenger service in Germany and they're being deployed in other parts of Europe as well. But in Canada, since we completed the study, there was a call for design proposals from again, a trollings. And during that call, unfortunately there were not sufficiently equal proposals from the hydrogen side. And that's mainly because of lack of locomotive designs available for the power they needed for go trains. And so that, that was the state then, and this year, if you are falling rails, at least the Canadian Pacific, they announced a design for hydrogen fuel locomotive, and they are going ahead with that project. So they will probably demonstrate this locomotive in the next one or two years. And that will be a turning point for Canada, because if, when the locomotive is appro, that it can do the same level of service that these locomotives have been doing, and then they'll start indexing more of those engines. And the engine design itself will get involved over the next few generations of design, and then they will be able to make it more of a permanent sort of solution to use hydrogen. And, and currently the status is there are no hydrogen power lows available to sort of help with this transition in using hydrogen fuel.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Okay. And so do you see if this implementation is successful? How long before there is mass adoption? You said, you know, in a few generations, how long is that? Is that 10, 20 years?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
No. Yeah. I meant the same generations, which is, which could be even sooner than that. So it depends on the locomotive development cycle and the generation. What I mean is the fuel cells. For example, there's a Canadian company, ARD power systems in PC, they make fuel cells and each year they evolve their design by improving the efficiency, reducing the cost of their fuel cells tax. So those equations will play into the design that Kennedy Pacific is developing. And so all the different components of the locomotive will evolve in subsequent years when they move from say the demonst demonstration phase to a deployment phase where they actually start using it within their fleet of trains. So it could be less, less than five years. Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Well, that's, that's sooner than I expected. That's that's good. Yeah. And do you see hydrogen powering all trains in the future?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Not necessarily. And mean the, again, when I talk about how hydrogen is produced is the green hydrogen. You are going from electricity, splitting water in a system called izer. So in the fuel cell, you send hydrogen and air and you get electricity in izer, you send electricity and water, and then the water gets split into hydrogen and oxygen. So the, the green hydrogen, once it's produced, then stored on board the trains, and then the trains use fuel cells to regenerate that power back into the motors. So if you follow the efficiency of this whole cycle, going from flipping water, make the hydrogen, and then raise the hydrogen board. The trains, there is there losses at both end. If you compare that with the, the wared cap area system, these are the electric trains that you see most in Europe, but they're also available in Ottawa, the OC transport that have electric wires on top.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
And there's a pantograph from the train that so draw power from those lines, the sea train in Calgary. They're also the, what they call ORID cat system. So they are direct electricity right through the wires, and then they run the traction motors. And so they are much more efficient than hydrogen trains. There is a carrier for the or cat system. It's not very practical for doing that over very long distances because the, the capital cost of installing those capital system is going to be enormous. So hydrogen, on the other hand, you can deploy in modules. If you have the hydrogen locomotive, you can operate a hydrogen train to day because it can source the hydrogen from different vendors. It may be as green as you want in the initial case, but it can run the trains in a modeler approach compared with the or system.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
So hydrogen will not be like powering all the trains. It will probably power the trains that cannot be practic, be operated with something else. So if you want to replace diesel, there are three alternatives to diesel. Currently available. One is the or cabinet system, which I mentioned will be very capital intensive and may not be suitable for very long distances. The second option is hydrogen powered trains. And the third option is what they call the battery powered trains and the batteries. The problem is they are slightly are they're about two times more efficient than hydrogen, but they are at least five times smaller in terms of onboard storage density. So that also gives you a sense of how much batteries can be used for rail. So when I say storage density, it's how much energy you can store in a given volume space, onboard a train or onboard any vehicle. And with batteries, you are, you are not going to have enough space for other equipment because of the low, lower image density for, for batteries. And currently batteries are also much more expensive and hydrogen equipment. So among the three options, you will see a mix of them.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah. And that makes sense. Based on the other conversations I've been having around transportation, it, it seems like one thing, isn't the silver bullet for fixing the, the problem. It's, it's usually a variety of things. And that would make sense that within cities, if you can just, just use electricity to power trains. Sure. But if you're going across the country, then it sounds like hydrogen definitely has a role there. I don't know if you can speak to, if you know anything about biofuels, are those being used with trains?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I'm not sure, but they could be if you consider for example, the gasoline we use most places across Canada, you'll find gasoline with some ethanol mixed over also see some engine ratings that can tolerate how much ethanol can have in the gasoline. So similar blending could happen in the future. That's another option that they will probably start as a, sort of a transition case technology where you start doing blending of fossil diesel with synthetic diesel or biodiesel fuels. And what they'll do is they'll is estimate the overall carbon intensity by having the blend that fuel. And they'll sort of start moving towards that, especially if their fleet is sort of quite new, say if they purchased a locomotive, which is only 10 years old, and if it still has 20 more years of life left, and it they're approach this pathway of either having blending a fossil visual with synthetic diesel that's made from various biomas ingredients, that's definitely possible. This is becoming more prevalent in the aviation sector where they're talking about synthetic fuels, especially on the energy storage against the discussion we had before, where having a liquid form helps increasing the energy content per unit dwelling. And the, the synthetic fuels offer that advantage.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And so with the synthetic fuels, let's say compared to hydrogen power, if we, if we can compare them, are they as environmentally friendly or should we be focusing more on, on things like hydrogen power?
Speaker 3 (17:59):
So if you look at the pathway to achieve those synthetic fuels, so we, we call diesel sort of the long chain hydrocarbons. And the main indicates the diesel is full of hydrogen and carbon molecules. The synthetic fuels are made in a similar fashion. So at the front end of the synthetic fuels, you'll still need clean hydrogen as an, as a main ingredient, as well as what we call renewable of clean carbon carbon. That's not from fossil fields. So when you mix the hydrogen and carbon, usually in the form of carbon, the outside, you can get several different products. One of the end products is what we call the synthetic diesel, which has similar properties to fossil diesel with slightly lower energy content. But when you use that synthetic diesel, your carbon accounting, so how much Reno gas emissions you can sort of estimate from that synthetic diesel will be much lower because you are not using fossil carbon to make that fuel in the first place, in terms of G emissions or what we call carbon intensity.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
The synthetic diesels will be much lower than O diesel. It may not be as clean as hydrogen, but because you have that additional advantage of more energy dense than hydrogen only because you have the carbon now for the life cycle, the synthetic diesel will have much better carbon intensity that and straight high vision. And the reason is your carbon intensity for the synthetic diesel is now in the negative numbers. The other way of looking at it is to make synthetic diesel. You can actually capture the carbon from the air using what they call direct air capture. So you are using the carbon that is already a GT component in the air to make the synthetic fuel. So when you are calculating the carbon intensity, you'll actually have negative numbers for the synthetic diesel for hydrogen. The carbon intensity will be zero. If you compare, or, or very low if, if you are electricity is cleaner to make the hydrogen or synthetic D diesel, the carbon intensity will always be negative because you are reusing the carbon in a more sort of environmentally.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
And so do you see those synthetic diesels as, are they using those more in the, the rail industry, or is it more hydrogen?
Speaker 3 (20:27):
At this point not both of them are not used like two that extent the especially in Canada, if you look at Europe hydrogen is currently being used or at least demonstrations are happening with pure hydrogen as the fuel board, because for, for those projects, they calculate just the tail emissions from the, from that particular rail only, they're not looking into the full system efficiency. So when I say full system efficiency, what is the source of the electricity the carbon trunk footprint for the electricity, and then what, how is hydrogen produced? And this should needed to get to the train. So the carbon footprint for that set of equipment, and then they need to look at the, the rail operations and the footprint for that. So those are the different pieces. So if you look at some of these projects, they probably will talk about the, the, the envelope for the carbon accounting.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
They'll be, just look D rail operations only. There are parallels to other, other modes of transport. I mentioned this earlier, too. So since rail is again, freight rail is 10% of the transport mode in Canada. The other transport mode that contributes significantly, the GT emissions in Canada will be the, the, the trucks, even Mari and cargo transport is one of the larger contributors. And what are the technologies? They're all very similarly relevant to each of these transport modes. For example, if Canadian Pacific successfully demonstrate the hydrogen coupon for the locomotives, the same engine the, the fuel configurations, the power modules, they can be sort of translated into these other modes, including say, class a trucks, which are on the roads, transporting most of the goods across the country, as well as for cargo carriers on board vessels. So, so there are parallel are relevance again, in the future, it could be hydrogen or hydrogen plus carbon, sort of the synthetic fuels. Those can also be used in different engines. And one of the good things with synthetic diesel, you can use that in existing internal condition engines. Of course the EF is slightly lower, but you can sort of adapt the transition to this new fuel much sooner than going with pure hydrogen.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, that makes sense. And if you're using those lower emission fuels for trucks and other forms of transportation, then obviously that has a bigger impact than just in one industry. So that's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah. And one carrier for the, the synthetic diesel is you need to find that renewable or non causal carbon almost on a continuous basis for the scale of transition we are talking about. So the immediate source for such carbon is the biomas and the biomas term itself covers a very large right of things starting with agricultural waste. It can also include municipal solid waste into that. Cities have plenty of those and, and they sometimes don't know what to do with it, any organic waste, anything that can decompose and, and generate things like maintain all these are sort of feed stock for that, what we call the renewable carbon and the hydrogen will come from water. And then, so you blend them together to make the synthetic fuel. So it's, it's opportunity. But also there, there is a sustainability issue, like when, when you get it to the scale of how much diesel we use today in the country.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah. So this, so this show is, is about empowering citizens to take action on climate change. So, in your opinion, with the things we've talked about, about technology, whether it's rail or, or other transportation and the different fuels, what can people do to make sure that we're adopting those things? We meet our climate targets,
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Right? And, and again, I think we touched on this earlier, too. So if you are living in cities and if you can access public transport I think people should take that option and use them because every claim that you use, your personal vehicle, you are con to the DG emissions, people might say I'm using a battery powered vehicle or hydrogen powered personal vehicle. So I'm invol friendly. You need to also remember where your electricity is coming from. If it's coming from fossil fuel base power plans, then you are not really helping environment because still accessing those electrons made from fossil fuel. So for example, in products is like British Columbia in Ontario, Manitoba Kibet, the electrical grid is almost a hundred percent clean because the electricity comes from hydro electric, renewables are nuclear. So the geog emissions are already reduced there. So, so you are using electric vehicles in these provinces.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
You are already contributing to the reduction in G emissions. And I think I know the pandemic has, has created so many challenges and, and sort of put out life upside down. But the positive sites from an environmental perspective is as, as a total population in the country are, are traveling less than what we did prior to the pandemic. So that, that itself is showing sign in the, the environmental impacts have been significant used in the last two years, but we are also ordering things more online. So from a personal aspect, it can also think about because every time you order a truck is delivering to your door, the, or using fossil fuels. So until we change that aspect I think people should probably think about, maybe you can order together instead of ordering every week, you can combine those orders and order once in a month, these are small little things, but it'll definitely it'll help the environment to sort of minimize the amount of movement as a safety we have, especially in using positive views. No,
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That's, that's very helpful. Great. So those small little changes can add up and hopefully we see some of those, those bigger changes as well. So I, I think that we'll end it there. So thanks so much for your time. Normal. This has been very informative. Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. Well, that was my conversation with Dr. Gnanapragasam. I basically knew nothing about trains or how they were powered. So I definitely learned a lot, like many other guests. I'm glad he championed public transportation. I hope that one day we'll see more train services offered to between Canadian cities. Well, that's all for me. I'm Michael Bartz. Here's the feeling a little less you over our head when it comes to saving the planet. We'll see you again soon. You know, where my head was produced and hosted by Michael Bartz original theme song by Gabriel Thaine. If you would like to get in touch with us, please email info@emailovermyheadpodcast.com special. Thanks. To Telus STORYHIVE for making this show possible.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
I'm trying to save the planet or will someone please save me.