British Ricardo has supplied its TorqStor flywheel energy storage system to digital hydraulics specialist Artemis Intelligent Power (Artemis) for the joint DDflyTrain research project.
Energy storage firm Ricardo’s flywheel is aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of flywheel storage on diesel multiple unit (DMU) trains. Artemis will integrate the flywheel with its hydraulic pump-motor transmission system to store and reuse energy using flywheels spinning at 45,000rev/min.
The TorqStor flywheel system can be integrated into mechanical, electrical or an advanced hydraulic transmission system. It scales from 250KJ to 4MJ to support a variety of applications without the cost of multiple variants, according to Ricardo.
“Every train journey involves a lot of stopping and starting, and so also a lot of braking and acceleration,” said David Rollafson, vice president global innovation at Ricardo. “If we can harvest some of the energy from braking and use this when the vehicle is gathering speed again, we can save a lot of diesel and so a lot of money for train operators.”
Artemis and Ricardo partner with rail technology expert Bombardier Transportation on the UK-funded DDflyTrain project.