Energy Usage in Railway Wayside Object Heating : Modeling of melting of Ice, Estimation of heating power requirement in Switch and Renewable energy feasibility for a Railway system

Abstract: Trafikverket operates about 12000 Switches and crossings (SnCs) of which 6800 are equipped with an electrical heating system of 10−30kW power to keep SnCs functional throughout the winters by keeping them free of Snow/Ice. The energy consumption is approximately 200−130GWh/year costing approximately 10−15 million Euros annually. Electricity demand is continuously rising in Sweden and if coupled with unpredictable events can highly impact the grid energy mix and electricity prices which can lead to a higher operating carbon footprint & expenses. This master thesis work is developed through a couple of research programs to investigate the power usage in wayside objects. Currently, work is in progress to make the wayside objects ‘smart’ so that they can operate fully autonomously with two objectives to reduce the overall power consumption and obtain it from local energy resources. Mathematical modeling of unsteady close contact melting of rectangular Ice/Snow blocks of different volumes on the horizontal surfaces has been solved using numerical methods to calculate the melting time and power requirement. A parametric study has been done for various sizes, and initial & hot surface temperatures. Further, using ANSYS Fluent, CFD simulations have been performed to calculate the heat transfer rate from the Rail body for various combinations of heat source & ambient temperature, and wind speeds. These results shall help to devise a control strategy for the dynamic power supply which can help to optimize the power consumption. Finally, evaluating the renewable resources potential; ground source heat pumps using borehole U-pipes appear to be the best option which can drastically reduce the electricity requirement for the optimized heating power requirement. Most of Sweden has granite bedrock which is one of the reasons for the successful deployment of heat pumps. It’s definitely worth expanding its usage in other sectors as well like Railways.