Gazprom, Russian Railways, Transmashholding, Russia’s largest manufacturer of rail rolling stock and medium-speed diesel engines, and Sinara Group have entered into an agreement covering the utilization of natural gas as engine fuel.
The agreement was signed by Andrei Bokarev, President of Transmashholding, Oleg Belozyorov, President of RZD, Alexey Miller, Chairman of Gazprom’s Management Committee, and Dmitry Pumpyansky, Sinara’s Board Chairman.
The agreement addresses the List of Instructions of Russian President pr-1298 of June 11, 2013 with regard to expansion of natural gas utilization as engine motor for rail vehicles. The parties have also expressed their willingness to participate actively, within their spheres of specialization, in the implementation of actions contained in Integrated action plan aimed at the development of natural gas utilization as engine fuel, No 6819p – P9, approved by the Government of the Russian Federation on November 14, 2013, and developed Public program on the introduction of gas-engine vehicles split into individual subprograms on automotive, rail, marine, river, air transport and special purpose machines.
Under the agreement, Gazprom undertakes to build gas-fuel infrastructure facilities in line with applicable specifications, locomotive filling, and priority of operation of rail vehicles using gas fuel.
Subject to agreement with Gazprom, RZD commits to define areas where gas-fuel infrastructure will be placed, and make necessary updates of production and technical facilities of depots responsible for operation of gas-fuel rolling stock in line with applicable codes and standards. Transmashholding and Sinara, in their role of rolling stock producers, shall take care of certification of developed locomotives, production of prototype batch and aftersales services for the products on the basis of life cycle maintenance contracts.
The agreement covers TEM19 gas reciprocating shunter created by Transmashholding and GT1h gas-turbine locomotive by Sinara.
TEM19 locomotive is a shunting locomotive with gas-reciprocating engine developed jointly by the engineers of VNIKTI and Bryansk Engineering Plant (an entity of Transmashholding). Design of TEM19 gas shunter reduces air emissions and exhaust smoking. According to the design calculations, the operation of TEM19 shunting locomotive will allow significant savings of energy costs – up to 20% per annum. (Tmholding/Business World Magazine)
