A flywheel-based braking system may help to reduce the carbon footprint of Britain's diesel-powered railroad trains.

Artemis Intelligent Power, Bombardier Transportation and Ricardo have teamed up for a collaborative project, the DDflyTrain project, to develop a flywheel-based regenerative braking system. It combines Ricardo's TorqStor high-speed flywheel energy storage system with the Artemic Digital Displacement hydraulic pump-motor transmission system to reuse and store energy using flywheels spinning at 45,000 rev/minute.

“Every train journey involves a lot of stopping and starting, and so also a lot of braking and acceleration," says 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."

The braking system also could help reduce pollution.

“When pulling out of a station, diesel engines are noisy and pump out a lot of pollution," says Rollafson. “Adding stored energy to help acceleration would reduce this."

The companies now are in talks with several UK train operators about how to apply the technology within existing rolling stock.

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