Rio Tinto Group is preparing for trials of battery-powered locomotives in Australia, where it uses giant autonomous trains \u2014 the world\u2019s largest and longest robots \u2014 to transport iron ore across the vast Outback.<\/p>\n
Converting its 2.5-kilometer (1.6-mile) long trains to electric would help trim the producer\u2019s use of diesel, a key source of its\u00a0industrial pollution<\/a><\/strong>, and help spur efforts to cut direct greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030.<\/p>\n Each so-called consist \u2014 a combination of typically three locomotives and 240 cars \u2014 can carry about 28,000 tons of iron ore, equivalent to more than $3.2 million of cargo at current prices.<\/p>\n Since 2018, the vast majority of journeys across Rio\u2019s 1,900-kilometer rail network in Western Australia\u2019s Pilbara region have been completed without human drivers.<\/p>\n Tests with four Wabtec Corp. electric locomotives will begin in 2025 and are aimed at driving improvements that would help make the technology viable, according to Richard Cohen, managing director for the iron ore unit\u2019s rail, port and core services.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about us helping the manufacturers and the developers get to a solution that suits us \u2014because if we don\u2019t run in, no one will do it,\u201d Cohen said Thursday at Rio\u2019s rail maintenance hub outside Karratha.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will learn a lot about batteries in the Pilbara, about batteries on a train.\u201d<\/p>\n The trial locomotives \u2014 which will need drivers \u2014 have about 7.5 megawatt-hours of energy capacity, compared to around 13 megawatt-hours for Rio\u2019s existing diesel-powered fleet.<\/p>\n Lifting battery density to the required specifications remains a challenge for the sector, Cohen said.<\/p>\n Rio uses about 1.3 billion litres of diesel a year as a fuel for mining equipment, trucks and trains, accounting for about 13% of total direct emissions, according<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>to company filings.<\/p>\n Experiments with smaller, battery-powered haul trucks used in mines will begin at the Pilbara from next year.<\/p>\n The $940 million programme to deploy autonomous trains \u2014 which initially struggled with delays and cost overruns \u2014 has delivered benefits, Cohen said.<\/p>\n Robot trains have improved speed and capacity, cutting about two hours from a typical 40-hour rail journey from a mine to port and back again by eliminating the need to stop and change drivers each time they\u2019ve completed a 12-hour shift.<\/p>\n Rio Tinto Group is preparing for trials of battery-powered locomotives in Australia, where it uses giant autonomous trains \u2014 the world\u2019s largest and longest robots \u2014 to transport iron ore across the vast Outback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":512106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29366],"tags":[2798,90180,67290,41714,90178,12027,75000,90182],"class_list":["post-512046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motoring","tag-australia","tag-electric-trains","tag-electric-vehicles-evs","tag-mining","tag-rio-tinto-group","tag-robots","tag-trains","tag-wabtec-corp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512110,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512046\/revisions\/512110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: Major revelation about Uber\u2019s secret airport fees<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"