Collaborations that Forge the Future

The transportation sector is going through the most profound and rapid transition in more than a generation. With the growth of wind and solar power in electric generation, transportation has become the leading source of carbon emissions in the United States. Meeting ambitious national decarbonization goals will require an intense focus on slashing the carbon impact of transporting goods and people.

Much work has been done already to reduce carbon emissions from personal automobiles and commercial trucks, but other modes of transportation-such as rail, marine, and off-road vehicles-could prove much more challenging to decarbonize. That makes developing low- and no-carbon fueled internal combustion engines (ICEs) an imperative, both as a transitional technology and an option to electrification across the entire transportation sector.

Decarbonizing the internal combustion engines and fuels used in these vehicles will be no easy task, however.

The ICEs used in these large applications are amazing energy-conversion devices that can have thermal efficiencies that rival stationary power plants. The energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuels has provided engine-based powertrains with incredible range and utility. Over the past decades, generations of engineers have worked to make these technologies some of the most advanced known to humanity.

And yet there still is room for improvement.

While aggressive corporate sustainability goals along with worldwide emissions and carbon-reduction regulations might seem to point to an EV future, new technologies such as highly efficient hybrid powertrains and low-lifecycle carbon and no-carbon fuels will be an important part of this decarbonization vision.

It is a vision that will include mechanical engineers and ASME as key contributors. In fact, ASME has had an organized Internal Combustion Engine Division (ICED) for more than a century and ASME members continue to play key roles in the research and development of advanced ICE technologies.

A recent research initiative promoted with federal funding provides an excellent example of how ASME continues to push the boundary toward cleaner, more efficient transportation.

For decades, the U.S. government focused its transportation research toward on-road transportation. That made sense, considering road vehicles such as cars and trucks were part of nearly every American’s daily life, and the combustion byproducts of those vehicles were a source of air pollution in major cities. Technological innovations over the past 50 years have reduced visible pollution considerably.

Today, greenhouse gas emissions—especially from the hardest to decarbonize sectors—are a major concern, and transportation research priorities reflect that. In 2021, the U.S. congressional budget indicated the White House and the U.S. Department of Energy’s research priorities for transportation were pivoting from on-road transportation technologies to the decarbonization of off-road, rail, marine, and aviation sectors. At the same time, industry goals for rapidly decarbonizing these same sectors were being announced, and long-term planning was well underway.

These public and private initiatives have led to some wide-ranging collaborations.

Take one example: the freight rail sector. In the U.S., rail is dominated by diesel-electric locomotives, which employ a large diesel engine to power an electric generator that sends electricity to motors connected to the axles. It is certainly not impossible to electrify railways (electric freight trains are common in Europe), but the continent-spanning distances traversed by American railways make such a conversion more expensive and potentially unattractive to U.S. railway companies. To reduce the carbon intensity of freight railways, the U.S. may need to follow another path.

A federal funding opportunity led to a multi-year project for decarbonizing the rail sector that kicked off in November 2022. Wabtec, a leading manufacturer of freight locomotives headquartered in Pittsburgh, sent a single-cylinder research engine the company developed to a laboratory at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. The single-cylinder research engine is based on the 12-cylinder Wabtec Evolution locomotive engine, which is a 4,500-hp, turbocharged V12 used in long-haul freight rail applications. The single-cylinder engine has 15.7-liter displacement and a 250-mm bore. The entire research engine assembly is 8.5 feet tall.

Researchers at ORNL’s National Transportation Research Center will run the engine on both hydrogen and diesel in a dual-fuel strategy to investigate the viability of hydrogen fuel and to help develop necessary hardware and control strategies. The hydrogen dual-fuel experiments will focus on understanding in-cylinder mixing and unique backfire challenges for hydrogen. Understanding engine knock (unintended end gas autoignition) with diesel-ignited hydrogen dual-fuel combustion is important, along with understanding nitrogen oxide formation and reduction potentials.

The first stages of the research—which is supported by Wabtec, the U.S. Department of Energy, and a project with the Federal Rail Administration—will focus on ways to retrofit existing locomotives to run on hydrogen or other low-carbon fuels in addition to diesel. The ability to adapt existing equipment is critically important, as the current generation of engines used in rail, marine shipping, and large off-road applications will likely be in use for 30 or more years. This means technologies that are suitable to retrofit the current generation of clean engines to use low-lifecycle carbon fuels could greatly accelerate the decarbonization of the transportation sector.

Later research will focus on developing engines that can run entirely on alternatives. Though hydrogen is currently a popular non-carbon-containing alternative due to its potential to be produced via wind or solar power, the fuel that decarbonizes rail applications could be ammonia, biodiesel, or a different synthetic fuel.

A linked project with Wabtec, Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., and Convergent Science Inc. (CSI), the Madison, Wis., based developer of computational fluid dynamics tools used in the design of new powertrains, is focusing on computational fluid dynamics of engine interactions with these alternative fuels to guide experimental campaigns. While the initial emphasis is on retrofit technologies for the existing generation of locomotive engines, the teams will also look ahead to future technologies for the next generation of clean and efficient prime movers that are well suited for the staggering requirements for operability, range, and robustness needed for rail transportation.

On its surface, the collaboration described above is between leading private companies and two Department of Energy national laboratories. But it is also a story that demonstrates the importance of professional engineering societies, and ASME in particular.

The value of engaging in technical societies may not be immediately clear to engineers, especially early in their careers. For engineers in industry, academia, and national laboratories, technical society engagement could be viewed as another unpaid activity without a clear return on investment. But the time engineers spend together while serving on committees, planning conferences, organizing sessions, and working on standards provides a unique opportunity to work with global colleagues and build connections that can pay off in unexpected ways.

These individuals are highly motivated volunteers who have committed to serve the greater engineering good. Spending time with engaged and motivated professionals who are all volunteering their time helps to form bonds and deeper relationships while yielding new insights fueled by diverse experiences and backgrounds.

In an era of unprecedented energy transitions and the need for multi-disciplinary and multi-institution solutions to the toughest engineering problems, engagement within technical societies is more important than ever.

Consider this chain of events: In the days after the 2021 congressional budget was finalized, engineers at ORNL began internal discussions on how the lab could participate in the opportunity to research off-road technology. They soon realized that the connections made between engineers in ASME’s ICED could be crucial to putting together a public-private collaboration. Robert Wagner, the director of the Buildings and Transportation Science Division at ORNL, had a strong relationship with Tom Lavertu, engineering technical lead at Wabtec and one of the authors of this article, from their time together on the ICED Executive Committee. Wagner and called Lavertu directly to pull him into the discussion.

At Argonne National Laboratory at virtually the same time, Doug Longman and Sibendu Som (another author of this article) had the same idea and called Lavertu about opportunities for collaboration where they could leverage the expertise of their respective organizations. Again, there was an ASME connection: Lavertu and Som had a strong relationship from their time on the ICED Executive Committee which helped them identify opportunities for collaboration where they could leverage the expertise of their respective organizations. They quickly realized that they should pull Kelly Senecal from Convergent Science into the discussions, as they had worked closely with him on the ICED Executive Committee and knew that CSI’s CFD tools were designed to aid in the design of new powertrain systems from light-duty passenger vehicles up to marine and rail applications.

It is said that luck favors the well-prepared, but it also smiles on the well-connected. The successful partnership had to pull together engines and fuels expertise across experimental research, modeling and simulation, and production and do all that quickly if it was to qualify for the funding opportunity.

It would not have been possible without the time the leaders of this collaboration spent together in service to ASME, which gave them deeper connections to call upon and mutual respect, understanding of interests, capabilities, and opportunities.

The role of technical societies like ASME is critical in forming and maintaining professional relationships across dispersed industry centers, universities, and research institutions. To solve the most pressing global engineering challenges, these relationships are more important than ever. Relationship building from engagement within technical societies for partnering, recruiting, and staying abreast of the current challenges and potential solutions is invaluable. When the groups are diverse, it adds an additional level of opportunity to interact with individuals who would otherwise not meet.

It should also be noted that the timing of this collaboration happens to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ICE Division. Some have questioned whether the internal combustion engine will have another century. But with investment and continuing research into low-carbon and carbon-free technologies, the internal combustion engine has a firm place in the future, not only for transportation, but for stationary power generation as well.

Improved efficiency, cleaner fuels, hybridization, smart controls, advanced designs, heat management, and advanced aftertreatment technologies are all areas of significant research for on-road and off-road engines alike. It’s up to the internal combustion engine community and to the entire engineering community to take these innovations and keep the industry relevant and moving forward.