For something like a shipping container nuclear seems more feasible than wind, and that says more about the feasibility of wind than the feasibility of nuclear reactors on shipping vessels.
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Tesla Cargo Ship
- Thread starter Buckminster
- Start date
petit_bateau
Active Member
1) If you think nuclear reactors on land are expensive, try sending them to sea to really make your eyes water.
2) The world is only one new railway line away from there being a rail link that can substitute for all the Far East <> North America container trade, with little or no seafreight required (the Bering Strait connection). There is now sufficient potential in the existing Far East <> Europe rail lines to substitute for all the container traffic on that route. And I am continually putting up news items showing intra-Asia rail cargo links growing. By the way, the rail links are faster and can be 100% renewable. It is quite conceivable that long distance containerised seafreight is an endangered species. Just like we already know long distance seafreight of oil/gas/coal is very much an endangered species.
Global container trade by trade lane 2022 | Statista
Container trade flows within Asia reached an estimated volume of 42.1 million TEUs in 2022.
www.statista.com
1) If you think nuclear reactors on land are expensive, try sending them to sea to really make your eyes water.
2) The world is only one new railway line away from there being a rail link that can substitute for all the Far East <> North America container trade, with little or no seafreight required (the Bering Strait connection). There is now sufficient potential in the existing Far East <> Europe rail lines to substitute for all the container traffic on that route. And I am continually putting up news items showing intra-Asia rail cargo links growing. By the way, the rail links are faster and can be 100% renewable. It is quite conceivable that long distance containerised seafreight is an endangered species. Just like we already know long distance seafreight of oil/gas/coal is very much an endangered species.
View attachment 882170
Global container trade by trade lane 2022 | Statista
Container trade flows within Asia reached an estimated volume of 42.1 million TEUs in 2022.
There is a meme about the point you might want to investigate.
I do wonder how America will feel about being reliant on Russia for access to the world trading markets. Not to mention it would take 50 cargo trains to equal one cargo ship.
Interesting that interasia trade accounts for 1/2 of the worlds transport by sea, despite India and China being able to be connected by rail and rail being the panacea you think it is…
Sure we need to improve our rail system, but it’s no substitute for nuclear cargo ships
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petit_bateau
Active Member
The qualitative point is very valid. It depends, and in any case I think we will get to the same place in carbon terms by way of (green) ammonia shipping in due course.There is a meme about the point you might want to investigate.
I do wonder how America will feel about being reliant on Russia for access to the world trading markets. Not to mention it would take 50 cargo trains to equal one cargo ship.
Interesting that interasia trade accounts for 1/2 of the worlds transport by sea, despite India and China being able to be connected by rail and rail being the panacea you think it is…
Sure we need to improve our rail system, but it’s no substitute for nuclear cargo ships
The quantitative point is not at all valid. The loco & wagon fleets required are equivalent in size to those already in use within North America, or within Europe, i.e. business as usual.
Whilst I don't think direct-wind-powered vessels will play a great role in the next few decades, nor do I think nuclear ones will either. And I'm no stranger to either type.
India and China are edging towards rail connections. Or more precisely Chinese-controlled rail connections are creeping down the peninsula and ever-closer to India . As for that matter are Sino/Russian-dependent ones via Iran etc. The world keeps changing in front of our eyes. It may be that the CCP is not in charge of China when the Indo-Chinese rail systems interlock. And the remants of the Soviet Union may no longer be called the Russian Federation when the Bering Strait gets a rail link.
Yea, so you’d have to have multiple rail links over the bearing straight to avoid a choke point, and you’d need them spread so that there is redundancy. Then you’d have to double the number of trains and labor needed to operate the trains.
I think the NS Savanah demonstrated the feasibililty of nuclear power for commercial merchant vessels. NS Savannah - Virtual Tour
Essentially, that ship has sailed its last time.
Kite sails certainly are limited to tail winds but other sailing ships have been able to sail against the wind for a long time. Depending on sail size, many can sail fast with a beam wind (wind 90 degrees to direction of travel) than a tail wind.
I don't see either nuclear or sail replacing fuel and combustion for shipping any time soon. Biofuels are probably the only sustainable option in our lifetimes.
petit_bateau
Active Member
The duel fuel ammonia moves are gathering pace*. Fleet owners are ordering vessels, bunkerage ports are ordering bunkerage facilities, and the manufacturers are ordering ammonia manufacturing kit. At a guess this will get adopted faster than biofuel. The handling limitations on ammonia are such that one doesn't really want it in widespread use by the general public (which rules out road vehicles). The corrosion issues are such that one doesn't really want to put it through the high stress areas of a gas turbine (which rules out aircraft).
So it seems likely that vehicles go direct to BEV; aircraft go to liquid fuel substitutes of various origins; and deep sea commercial shipping goes to ammonia. Whilst rail gets electrified and progressively captures more markets in some geographies. Just imho.
(* if you scan back through the Daily Energy News thread you'll see various clippings on this Energy Sector News )
I'm not too familiar with the options for making ammonia. The only way I know of is starting with natural gas (methane) as is done in the fertilizer industry. This approach, however, releases all of the Carbon in the methane and that is usually emitted as CO2 so, other than reduced particulate emissions, it is hardly an improvement from use of oil for deep sea ships.
Are there better ways to produce ammonia that are viable?
petit_bateau
Active Member
The pathway for green ammonia is :
(Renewable electricity > electrolysis of water > hydrogen) + (renewable electricity > nitrogen from air via chilling/liquefaction) = ammonia (NH3) using Haber Bosch process
As to whether it is viable personally I have my doubts when compared to deep electrification of rail, and extension of freight rail network globally. It really depends on non-economic factors (i.e. dislike of having strategic rail routes dependent on iffy countries).
I also strongly suspect that the bridge into green ammonia will be largely built on black/brown ammonia, i.e. no real improvement whatsoever. How fast that changes will depend on carbon price etc.
I popped a relevant news item up on todays Energy News thread, but here it is. It is not often that you see asset owners asking regulators (IMO) to enforce a deeper/faster move to greenery, which in this case will clearly be ammonia given the background. It is coming faster than people think - the Maersks and port authorities of this world do not want ther ammonia investments to be undercut by a long tail of unconverting dirty polluters, so the money will talk.
Shipping decarbonisation: Industry to IMO: No. More. Excuses.
Maritime leaders and clean fuel producers are ready to decarbonise shipping with green hydrogen – and ask the IMO to increase ambition.
www.energymonitor.ai
Optimeer
Member
I was encouraged by a disucssion about ships in the investor thread thinking about electric cargo ships. I didn‘t read the other post in this forum yet.
A few weeks ago, I was at air fair and saw an electric ship motor.
Of course this is nice, but probably not the best imeaginable solution. For example, the battery is too small and the heavy part, the battery is now at the highest point, which is excactly what you want to avoid on a ship. Teslas aim is to build a solution which is superior in any regard, first principle thinking. Mabye it will be something like my list below.
- minimizing the proportion of turbulent flow and increasing the proportion of laminar flow to increase efficiency. Possibly the current shape can be optimized and maybe the future shape will have elements from a stealth aircraft at the tip of the ship, under water.
- Easy to maneuvre, so maybe not only one propeller at the end but also one propeller at the front. If it delivers a benefit, the one in front can be retractable to minimize flow resistance. The motors will be able to turn (max. 360°)
- autonomy to increase precision in maneuvering and to lower personel cost (in operation and indirect for infrastrutcure during building the ships => e.g. no tower any more, just have some cameras and a FSD computer)
- optional: higher speed than conventional ships to have a competitive advantage and be able to charge more than the competition (and to hurt the competition)
- Data collection for better choice of routes, e.g. currents. Of course this is done yet, but Tesla can possibly do this on a finer granularity.
- Platooning to reduce the flow resistance. So the future naval transport could more look like trains in the helicopter view.
- high degree of standardisation (one size fits all - ok maybe not one size). Due to platooning it is not needed to build ship greater than lets say the panamax class. This lowers the time to market and lowers the investment cost for a particular ship.
- Chrarging up with satellite battery ships during the trip with capacities for lets say 2000 km. The batteries are filled up with solar and wind farms at strategic points over the main routes (for example at all the canals and the ports, and in India). They are autonomous, can also platoon and drive with lower speed to lower energy consumption during traveling. The battery ships don‘t pass the canals, this would be a waste of the canal capacity.
- Starting with the easy routes first, e.g. China <-> Europe, where it is easy to deliver the energy with satellite ships at many points. US-China and US-Europe will be the last routes served.
These are just some thoughts to generate optimism that sustainable naval transportation is possible. Tesla has good preconditions to be the leader in this future market. The hardest part of this endeavour is probably …
… getting the required amount of batteries.
A few weeks ago, I was at air fair and saw an electric ship motor.
Of course this is nice, but probably not the best imeaginable solution. For example, the battery is too small and the heavy part, the battery is now at the highest point, which is excactly what you want to avoid on a ship. Teslas aim is to build a solution which is superior in any regard, first principle thinking. Mabye it will be something like my list below.
- minimizing the proportion of turbulent flow and increasing the proportion of laminar flow to increase efficiency. Possibly the current shape can be optimized and maybe the future shape will have elements from a stealth aircraft at the tip of the ship, under water.
- Easy to maneuvre, so maybe not only one propeller at the end but also one propeller at the front. If it delivers a benefit, the one in front can be retractable to minimize flow resistance. The motors will be able to turn (max. 360°)
- autonomy to increase precision in maneuvering and to lower personel cost (in operation and indirect for infrastrutcure during building the ships => e.g. no tower any more, just have some cameras and a FSD computer)
- optional: higher speed than conventional ships to have a competitive advantage and be able to charge more than the competition (and to hurt the competition)
- Data collection for better choice of routes, e.g. currents. Of course this is done yet, but Tesla can possibly do this on a finer granularity.
- Platooning to reduce the flow resistance. So the future naval transport could more look like trains in the helicopter view.
- high degree of standardisation (one size fits all - ok maybe not one size). Due to platooning it is not needed to build ship greater than lets say the panamax class. This lowers the time to market and lowers the investment cost for a particular ship.
- Chrarging up with satellite battery ships during the trip with capacities for lets say 2000 km. The batteries are filled up with solar and wind farms at strategic points over the main routes (for example at all the canals and the ports, and in India). They are autonomous, can also platoon and drive with lower speed to lower energy consumption during traveling. The battery ships don‘t pass the canals, this would be a waste of the canal capacity.
- Starting with the easy routes first, e.g. China <-> Europe, where it is easy to deliver the energy with satellite ships at many points. US-China and US-Europe will be the last routes served.
These are just some thoughts to generate optimism that sustainable naval transportation is possible. Tesla has good preconditions to be the leader in this future market. The hardest part of this endeavour is probably …
… getting the required amount of batteries.
Not sure that Tesla will bother with ships. Elon thinks it is a simple engineering task and beneath him. I like the idea in the same way that I like mega packs. It would be a way for Elon to order even more batteries and raw materials to ensure that the premium products like cars never run out.
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
I wonder about the feasibility of using some proportion of the containers on a cargo ship as Megapacks (already built into a std-sized container) in order to propel the ship? I guess it'd be a quick'n'dirty way to electrify the existing fleet, especially if those ships already have azipods (electric drive units):
Cheers!
petit_bateau
Active Member
The best part is no part. Really there is only the Bering Strait tunnel/bridge outstanding and we can do the whole world with electric freight powered by renewables. Run down through the Darien and truly the whole world is solved apart from relatively minor islands, or short-straits stuff (Japan, Taiwan, etc).
(I enjoy being at sea. I used to be in the navy, and I'm a keen leisure sailor. But when one looks at the facts commercial shipping may become a lot less important in the future. If one does the sums on long distance commercial rail vs long distance seafreight it is not obvious that seafreight will persist at scale.)
(I enjoy being at sea. I used to be in the navy, and I'm a keen leisure sailor. But when one looks at the facts commercial shipping may become a lot less important in the future. If one does the sums on long distance commercial rail vs long distance seafreight it is not obvious that seafreight will persist at scale.)
No don’t. Let’s leave some places in the world pristine without humans driving their monster equipment through and cutting down trees and bisecting and dividing the region with these roadways.
Tunnels - maybe? Roads - No.
petit_bateau
Active Member
I just pulled out some of my previous calculations and refreshed some of the sums a bit. For those who are unaware a useful acronym is a 'teu' which is a typical twenty foot container (twenty foot equivalent unit) and that is a unit that is used in a lot of logistics calculations irrespective of whether rail, road, or sea.
I used an Emma Maersk E class vessel (approx 14,700 teu) rather than one of the newer EEE class (18,000 teu) since I had previously run the numbers for the E.
www.marinelink.com
Firstly let's just put the solar container vessel to bed shall we, at least for long distance commercial cargo carrying via transoceranic routes. An E class has an 81MW main engine, or 100MW of total generation capacity if you counnt the other auxiliary engines. I think the actual shaft power at economic voage speeds (18kts) is approx 40MW. The full 100 MW will be to run ship services and attain the 25kts max speed. Anyway in contrast If you carpet a Emma Maersk with solar over the full oblong of the vessel from stem to stern, you can get a peak power of 5MW at 1,000 W/m2 insolation and 25% efficiency. Clearly flat solar won't achieve 25%, but in any case one can't get 1,000W/m2 for the whole 24h/d x 365d/yr and realworld capacity factors are more like 14%, yielding an annual average of 0.8MW continuous (24h/d), which is 2% of the 40MW required for economic cruising.
On the required battery to do a transoceanic run numbers are beginning to become more hopeful, so I withdraw some of my previous remarks. A useful typical voyage is Rotterdam (EU) to Norfolk (USA) which is 6,283 km long. It is neither the longest such voyage nor the shortest, but it is a good typical one. At economic speeds (i.e. 40MW) this takes 190 hours (8 days), and is 7,111 MWh of voyage energy (excluding auxiliaries). We must be careful to use realworld battery densities / volumes including all the physical space for install, coling, maintenance, cabling, etc. The latest Tesla Megapacks are 3.9 MWh of LFP each and are a fully stuffed volume of 42m3 each, and in contrast a standard twenty foot container is 38m3 volume. So for practical purposes we can use 3.9MW/teu as a representative volume for sketching out the required amount of the vessel.
Here is a typical picture of one of these container vessels
Which can be simplified to this drawing, which shows very crudely where stuff goes.
By inspection of photos we can observe that approximately one third of the containers are deck cargo, and two thirds internal hold cargo and we know that there are just under 15,000 in total.
Returning to the battery volume required for the 7.1 GWh of battery we get 1,800 teu of battery assuming 100% efficient energy delivery and running down from 100% to 0% in SoC terms for Rotterdam-Norfolk. This translates to 12% of the equivalent cargo volume which would result in approximately the following space allocation if it were to be done. So we can see that from a naval architecture perspective these things are beginning to seem achievable.
I previously did some calculations for the Asia-Europe run and figured out that there approximately 100 of these vessels serving that route on about 19 days Shanghai to Hamburg using the fast steaming speed ogf 24 kts. The route really takes a month as there are several port stops at both ends. So there are about 2 movements/day of such a vessel at either terminal port (50 vessels in each direction, one month in one direction) and that in turn gives an insght into the energy requirements to recharge these batteries at the terminal ports. In other words 7GWh recharge in 24h for one vessel, or 14GWh supply to cater for two vessels - and that is just the Asia-Europe liner service. That concerts to 0.3 GW feed per vessel. So assume a very large seabord terminal port (such as Rotterdam, Hamburg, etc) is working half a dozen such vessels each day to servivce all the various liner runs (Asia, USA, LatAm, etc) that would be about a steady 1-2GW supply for the port, which is of the order of magnitude that makes sense. The shore power cables are going to require cooling mind you, but we are just as careful with other ship/shore connections so that is not unrerasonable.
So overall from a shipbuilding perspective, a fleet replacement persective, a port handling perspective, and overall economics perspective it does after all become tantalisingly possible.
Mind you, the sums for intercontinental rail look equally competitive.
So overall my personal suspicion becomes that methanol and ammonia fuels for shipping purposes are going to be very limited bridge-fuel transitions/distractions, and probably won't be needed at all. Which knocks yet another crutch out from the hydrogen economy arguments.
I used an Emma Maersk E class vessel (approx 14,700 teu) rather than one of the newer EEE class (18,000 teu) since I had previously run the numbers for the E.
Maersk & New Containership Economics 101
Capacity management is firmly on the minds of Maersk executives as the largest container ships in the world steam into service. Photographs of Maersk Line’s 18…
www.marinelink.com
Firstly let's just put the solar container vessel to bed shall we, at least for long distance commercial cargo carrying via transoceranic routes. An E class has an 81MW main engine, or 100MW of total generation capacity if you counnt the other auxiliary engines. I think the actual shaft power at economic voage speeds (18kts) is approx 40MW. The full 100 MW will be to run ship services and attain the 25kts max speed. Anyway in contrast If you carpet a Emma Maersk with solar over the full oblong of the vessel from stem to stern, you can get a peak power of 5MW at 1,000 W/m2 insolation and 25% efficiency. Clearly flat solar won't achieve 25%, but in any case one can't get 1,000W/m2 for the whole 24h/d x 365d/yr and realworld capacity factors are more like 14%, yielding an annual average of 0.8MW continuous (24h/d), which is 2% of the 40MW required for economic cruising.
On the required battery to do a transoceanic run numbers are beginning to become more hopeful, so I withdraw some of my previous remarks. A useful typical voyage is Rotterdam (EU) to Norfolk (USA) which is 6,283 km long. It is neither the longest such voyage nor the shortest, but it is a good typical one. At economic speeds (i.e. 40MW) this takes 190 hours (8 days), and is 7,111 MWh of voyage energy (excluding auxiliaries). We must be careful to use realworld battery densities / volumes including all the physical space for install, coling, maintenance, cabling, etc. The latest Tesla Megapacks are 3.9 MWh of LFP each and are a fully stuffed volume of 42m3 each, and in contrast a standard twenty foot container is 38m3 volume. So for practical purposes we can use 3.9MW/teu as a representative volume for sketching out the required amount of the vessel.
Here is a typical picture of one of these container vessels
Which can be simplified to this drawing, which shows very crudely where stuff goes.
By inspection of photos we can observe that approximately one third of the containers are deck cargo, and two thirds internal hold cargo and we know that there are just under 15,000 in total.
Returning to the battery volume required for the 7.1 GWh of battery we get 1,800 teu of battery assuming 100% efficient energy delivery and running down from 100% to 0% in SoC terms for Rotterdam-Norfolk. This translates to 12% of the equivalent cargo volume which would result in approximately the following space allocation if it were to be done. So we can see that from a naval architecture perspective these things are beginning to seem achievable.
I previously did some calculations for the Asia-Europe run and figured out that there approximately 100 of these vessels serving that route on about 19 days Shanghai to Hamburg using the fast steaming speed ogf 24 kts. The route really takes a month as there are several port stops at both ends. So there are about 2 movements/day of such a vessel at either terminal port (50 vessels in each direction, one month in one direction) and that in turn gives an insght into the energy requirements to recharge these batteries at the terminal ports. In other words 7GWh recharge in 24h for one vessel, or 14GWh supply to cater for two vessels - and that is just the Asia-Europe liner service. That concerts to 0.3 GW feed per vessel. So assume a very large seabord terminal port (such as Rotterdam, Hamburg, etc) is working half a dozen such vessels each day to servivce all the various liner runs (Asia, USA, LatAm, etc) that would be about a steady 1-2GW supply for the port, which is of the order of magnitude that makes sense. The shore power cables are going to require cooling mind you, but we are just as careful with other ship/shore connections so that is not unrerasonable.
So overall from a shipbuilding perspective, a fleet replacement persective, a port handling perspective, and overall economics perspective it does after all become tantalisingly possible.
Mind you, the sums for intercontinental rail look equally competitive.
So overall my personal suspicion becomes that methanol and ammonia fuels for shipping purposes are going to be very limited bridge-fuel transitions/distractions, and probably won't be needed at all. Which knocks yet another crutch out from the hydrogen economy arguments.
petit_bateau
Active Member
For those who are further interested it is interesting to note that by fleet tonnage 37% of the global merchant fleet is engaged in the transport of fossil fuels. So eliminating fossil fuel consumption (which I reckon humans are on course to largely do by ~2050) will also eliminate the corresponding transport of fossil fuels. Since the hardest to eliminate fossil fuels are the deep sea transport ones; the primary steel ones; and (potentially) the fertilisers, then it is nice to occasionally get a virtuous cycle in this respect.
DATA
6% are gas carriers.
33.9% of tonnage is bulkers, and 25% of these are coal, so 8.5%
25.4% are oil & product & chemical, of which 10% are chemical, so 22.9%
Total fossil fuel (oil/gas/coal) is 6% + 8.5% + 22.9% = 37.4%
DATA
6% are gas carriers.
33.9% of tonnage is bulkers, and 25% of these are coal, so 8.5%
25.4% are oil & product & chemical, of which 10% are chemical, so 22.9%
Total fossil fuel (oil/gas/coal) is 6% + 8.5% + 22.9% = 37.4%
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
Trains are an interesting case. Each loco has ~3.7 MW drive unit (typically 2-3 locos per train), so that's very neatly about 1 Megapack container per hour per engine at max power output. Container wagons come in 2-3 TEU capacities, while each train can carry an average capacity of 66 TEUs per trip (Woodburn, 2011). So payload and range of a battery powered train depends strongly upon the average power demanded of the engines. Electric powertrain has the advantage of efficiency and minimal engineering effort required to fully convert from diesel-electric drive to battery-electric. Diesel-electric already achieves ~500 mpg/ton of cargo (better than a diesel Semi, which may achieve ~300 mpg/ton, based on 7.5 mpg and 40 ton payload). But train transport often requires a Semi for depot delivery.
As for delivering Megapack itself from the port of arrival (or from the Megafactory, if on the continental road network) each Megapack can provide ~3.9 MWh of energy to the tractor, Tesla Semi/trailer can haul that Megapack (0.9+3.9)*500 = 2,400 miles before both the Megapack and the Semi's batteries are depleted. Of course, you'd "Platoon" those truck deliveries (most sites likely to require >3 Megapacks) so that highway range could be stretched slightly due to aero (perhaps +10%). That's the distance between Lathrop, CA and New York City (2,278 mi), or only 1,750 miles from Giga Texas.
P.S. the possibility of adding REGEN BRAKING to the net efficiency of a 20,000 ton train should not be taken LIGHTLY!
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petit_bateau
Active Member
Trains are an interesting case. Each loco has ~3.7 MW drive unit (typically 2-3 locos per train), so that's very neatly about 1 Megapack container per hour per engine at max power output. Container wagons come in 2-3 TEU capacities, while each train can carry an average capacity of 66 TEUs per trip (Woodburn, 2011). So payload and range of a battery powered train depends strongly upon the average power demanded of the engines. Electric powertrain has the advantage of efficiency and minimal engineering effort required to fully convert from diesel-electric drive to battery-electric. Diesel-electric already achieves ~500 mpg/ton of cargo (better than a diesel Semi, which may achieve ~300 mpg/ton, based on 7.5 mpg and 40 ton payload). But train transport often requires a Semi for depot delivery.
As for delivering Megapack itself from the port of arrival (or from the Megafactory, if on the continental road network) each Megapack can provide ~3.9 MWh of energy to the tractor, Tesla Semi/trailer can haul that Megapack (0.9+3.9)*500 = 2,400 miles before both the Megapack and the Semi's batteries are depleted. Of course, you'd "Platoon" those truck deliveries (most sites likely to require >3 Megapacks) so that highway range could be stretched slightly due to aero (perhaps +10%). That's the distance between Lathrop, CA and New York City (2,278 mi), or only 1,750 miles from Giga Texas.
P.S. the possibility of adding REGEN BRAKING to the net efficiency of a 20,000 ton train should not be taken LIGHTLY!
mmmmm..........
Let me pull out some notes I made (gosh) 6+ years ago when doing a China-Europe/etc rail/sea comparison. I'll abbreviate them as it was a long series of posts in a private forum and there may be missing elements in the conversation because I didn't archive everything. I think you'll find them informative.
Things have moved on since then - it is now definitely possible to avoid going via Russia when doing rail from China to Europe. Plus train lengths are now increasingly c.750m long as the new EU 'standard' rather than the 350m I did a lot of my sums on.
At the time I had day-job reasons to be carefully looking at this.
As you can imagine I have a big spreadsheet analysing this, still tucked carefully away. I checked my results at the time with both Maersk and Deutsche Bahn and it seems I was pretty accurate. That was why Maersk asked me not to publish at the time as they were making a series of investment moves that were related to these issues. Which I can see they have subsequently achieved.
===================================
ENERGY COSTS
Typical global average railfreight is 280 kJ per km-tonne (averaging DB and USA class 1). Using Emma Maersk as a typical modern freighter and 14 tonnes per teu, that yields 74kJ per km-tonne.
Using Shanghai to Hamburg as being the typical CN>EU transport need that is 10,600km by rail (Kazakh route) or 19,960km by sea (Suez route).
So that yields 2,968 MJ/tonne by rail or 1,477 MJ/tonne by sea.
Note we can electrify the railtracks and generate from renewables. It is rather tricky to run a large container ship on renewables for oceanic seafreight.
[edit - now just about doable for transAtlantic liner runs at 12% battery fraction, see my April-2023 recalcs]
The typical rail is 14-19 days transit with many departures daily (i.e. very little additional waiting for a train). The fastest sea transit is 19 days (i.e. Emma Maersk class @ 24kts fast steaming) and there are at present approx 20 sailings/day from the region (at 13,000 teu/vessel), but there may not be a vessel per day from your port.
FREIGHT RAIL UPTAKE cf SEA FREIGHT
At present (2017 data) there is a capacity 260,000 teu/week in Asia >North Europe with utilization at 95%. The railfreight capacity is 1,400 teu/week, i.e. 0.5% of seafreight. However that is forecast to grow to 6,700 teu/week by end 2018, i.e. 2.6% of seafreight.
Net capacity growth of global shipping is forecast to be 2.7%*.
Looking at those two numbers my prediction is that pretty soon railfreight substitution of seafreight will be biting into the shipping replacement numbers enough that it starts turning up in the build data. (I think we are already seeing similar effects going on in the oil/gas market where the impact of reservoir declines is not being passed through to pricing as quickly as it used to, because renewables are filling more and more of the gap.). Over a couple of decades a significant amount of sea > rail switching could occur. That in turn would lessen the attractiveness of shipping as there would be fewer departures per day by sea, and many many more by rail, i.e. wait times would work against shipping.
* http://www.dhl.com/content/dam/down...s/dhl-ocean-freight-market-update-dec2017.pdf
RAIL CAPACITY CONSIDERATIONS
Re railway line capacities there are no easy answers, however simple approximations can go a long way.
Assuming just one dual line/route/corridor (i.e. one pair of tracks in each direction) then capacity is a function of the headway (tip to tip) between trains, and containers (teu) per train. I am using the standard 41-ctr train that DB tell me they run on these routes in the calcs below. Such a train would be about 350m long which is quite short in freight train terms - they are trying to upgrade the core UK freight network to handle 740m-775m trains throughout.
To give 1400 ctrs/week CN > EU (i.e. the 2017 position) the interval between trains is 5-hours. That's so great that the concept of headway barely comes into it. That corresponds to 0.5% of seafreight.
To give 6700 ctrs/week (i.e. forecast end 2018) the interval between trains is 1-hour. That corresponds to 2.6% of seafreight demand.
So a headway of 30-mins on two dual routes would yield 27,500 teu/week. That is 10.6% of seafreight demand.
The journey time of 15 days gives an average train speeds of 29.4kph. Let' assume that a lot of time they are idle, not even being actively looped, so use 50kph as the operating speed. At 50kph on dual track in 3km signalling blocks the minimum technical headway is 350-secs, i.e. 4-mins. More practically 150 trains/day is a high capacity freight track and that is a 10-min headway. Dial 10-mins in to those calculations and rail freight on just the two existing routes, using just one pair of tracks in each direction, would accept 32% of the seafreight demand between Asia and Europe. That's without considering 4-tracking, or additional rail corridors.
One of the rationales for the Galileo satnav system is to be able to discriminate between vehicle road lanes, or rail lines, so as to be able to do automated block allocation etc. So running 3km blocks in this manner would be technically feasible.
As a crosscheck the typical stopping distance of such a train is about 1000m, and a 50km train does 3333 metres in 4 mins. The maths seems to work !
Basically it looks as if capacity constraints don't really come into it for quite a long time, and when they do could reasonably be addressed. There is already enough train-track to dramatically impact existing Asia<>Europe seafreight. For sure the trains themselves would need to be built, but so would ships. Crews sound like something to automate ...... just like ships.
I am not a train junkie, but I am very aware I am grossly simplifying a complex subject in the interests of tractability. I know I am simplifying. Don't shoot me for that.
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ENERGY CONSIDERATIONS
After building a spreadsheet it turns out the energy requirement is not that great an issue. It also means I can see approximately how big the error terms are in the input assumptions because I can do a circular argument back to the actual power of an Emma Maersk class vessel, whereas I started off from a reported specific fuel consumption number. Using the sfc I calculated a power requirement of 166 MW/ship whereas actual installed shaft power is about 100 MW/ship.
Anyway the result is that for (say) 25% approx penetration of electrified railfreight the trains would consume approx 5 GW for each direction, i.e. 10 GW in total. That's relatively simple to provide for over a 10,600km route, whether using renewables or natgas. Going to 80-100% renewables for 100% railfreight penetration is very reasonable in this context.
Serving this route takes about 100 ships in circulation (for 100% by sea), or - drum roll - 13,000 trains of 41 containers (for 100% conversion to rail). More realistically that amount of penetration would utilise longer trains of approx 120 teus, so about 4,500 trains in all. Before anyone suggests that isn't doable a quick wiki shows there are approx 32,000 locomotives in the USA at present, i.e. these numbers are entirely typical of continent-scale rail.
Economics would be greatly affected by fuel costs. At present the shipping is not paying for clean fuel (it is mostly high suphur content) and is not carrying any carbon tax (or equivalent). I'll have a dig around, but just eyeballing the numbers I figure it would be justified in a high oil price and moderate carbon tax scenario.
Basically don't assume global merchant fleets will always increase. This is the hypothesis I put out a couple of years ago* and it seems entirely doable to substitute quite a lot of global sea tonnage when one extends this line of reasoning towards its logical conclusion. Like everything else in the capital goods space it would be a 20-40 year transition, and it seems to already have started.
* placeholder for when I find the original post of mine on this topic (it was back near 2013 and I have never found it - it also deals with stuff like spacing solar/wind/battery along the lines; plus using the inevitable grid rights-of-way for time-shifting renewables in effect across weather zones, i.e. GW-scale x 1,000km lengths)
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[.........other aspects redacted................]
Re train lengths I have made a mistake in my analysis below [above]. It is 41 x 40' containers in a standard train package, i.e. 82 teu. That doubles the available capacities in my calcs. However RTZ are now running trans of 88 x 40' containers, i.e. 176 teu per press releases from 2017 and seeking to move their entire system to that. That quadruples the available capacities in my calcs.
Turning to numbers of tracks on a given route working through the UTLC website the photos all appear to be minimum of twin track, i.e. two independent tracks, one in each direction. Pulling up satellite imagery on Google for chokepoints such as the Dzungian Gate near Kazakh/China border on the southern route, or the Amal River area on the northern route, one can pick out confirmation of twin tracking (plus loops at the stations etc) which appears to confirm this. Almost all the mainline CIS areas appear to be electrified from what I can see though various press releases show that cannot be 100%. My calcs assume twin track on both routes, or quad track if common.
So in practical terms you are likely correct that Russia currently straddles the line at present. That clearly is a political risk, but not a capacity constraint. That would only change if the route around the south of the Caspian through Iran into Turkey were to become clear - and from reading around a lot of rail investment is going in on that corridor.
The quotes I have in for full containers (FCL) are steep to my eyes (I actually have a real short term need to ship faster to meet consumption of a Chinese client), almost as high as air, very high vs sea. DB's sales team's answer is that this is a premium product with limited space availability. Given my discussions with the DB planning team I am less sure. I suspect someone somewhere is making a nice margin. Perhaps UTLC or RZD.
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[Since then the none-Russia route has definitely opened, certainly in early 2023. Plus the minor matter of a war in Ukraine.)
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anyway, feel free to browse through that
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