A FEASIBILITY STUDY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATURAL GAS POWERED RAILROAD VEHICLE

초록

Advanced countries has recently expanded the subjects for regulation of emission gas from existing road vehicles to non-road vehicles and the Korean Ministry of Environment (MOE) started to review the regulation of non-road vehicles such as railroad vehicles, ships, and agricultural machinery. It was found that most of the diesel railroad vehicles operated in the country consist of diesel locomotives and diesel rail cars and they consume 250~300 million liters of diesel a year (Park et al., 2004). In this study, as a part of the feasibility study to introduce clean energy powered railroad vehicles, the general situation of the railroad vehicles operated in the country is analyzed and the air pollutant emission situation by diesel vehicles is presented based on their fuel consumption. Also, the quantity of greenhouse gas exhausted by diesel railroad vehicles was calculated and the quantity of greenhouse gas expected to be reduced when the fuel is changed from diesel to clean energy was calculated. When the fuel currently used by diesel railroad vehicles is changed to clean energy such as LNG, CNG, and biogas, CO2 emission is expected to be reduced. As the diesel railroad vehicles of Korail use about 9 million GJ of diesel a year in average, if diesel is changed to LNG, it is expected that more than 150 thousand tons of CO2 emission may be reduced a year although the difference in combustion efficiency is considered.