Regenerative Braking for Energy Recovering in Diesel-Electric Freight Trains: A Technical and Economic Evaluation

Abstract

The present work evaluates the application of regenerative braking for energy recovery in diesel-electric freight trains to increase efficiency and to improve decarbonization. The energy from regenerative braking has to be stored onboard when the track is not electrified. Different technologies of energy recovery are presented and discussed. The energy balance of an existing route is presented and simulated for different battery sizes. The analysis is illustrated with experimental data from an important Brazilian railway. Results show that the energy recovery from regenerative brake is a feasible investment and may be recommended to increase the efficiency in transportation and also to improve the low carbon mobility in railway systems.

An adaptive fuzzy sliding‐mode control for regenerative braking system of electric vehicles

“…Therefore, many scholars have studied the optimization of braking energy recovery efficiency, the trade-off between recovery efficiency and safety, the battery's actual state, and the automatic cruise combination. 14,15 Generally speaking, the control strategy of RBS for recovering more energy is mainly divided into parallel control and series control. The parallel control scheme has few changes to the traditional braking system.…”

Energy Recovering Using Regenerative Braking in Diesel–Electric Passenger Trains: Economical and Technical Analysis of Fuel Savings and GHG Emission Reductions

“…Most of the studies in the literature are devoted to systems for electric locomotives, whereas the number of contributions for diesel-electric locomotives in non-electrified railways is still relatively low [5].…”

“…In another study, it has been proved that regenerative braking can save up to 30% of lost energy [17]. In 2020, Mayrink et al [5] applied the electric brake regenerative for diesel-electric trains in Brazil. They proposed a methodology to calculate the fuel economy based on the force and friction power.…”

“…They extracted the relation between the power dissipation in the resistors' banks and the dynamic brake from the train's black box. They use a linear approximation to simplify the calculations [5]. The results of this study were expressed in terms of MARR (minimum accepted rate of return) and NPV (net and present value) [18,19].…”

Special Issue on Electronic Systems and Energy Harvesting Methods for Automation, Mechatronics and Automotive

“…Besides, significant energy loss in vehicles is related to braking, dissipating the kinetic energy as heat due to friction. Several regenerative braking systems have been proposed in the scientific literature, using the electromagnetic transduction mechanism [13].…”