Fortescue is an Australian mining company and already one of the largest iron mining companies in the world. She now also wants to be the first to create a infinite energy electric vehicle: a train that, once propelled by a starting charge, could continue to run endlessly by producing its own energy.
This is theoretically infeasible: the laws of thermodynamics do not make perpetual motion possible. A vehicle cannot produce enough energy while driving to compensate for the energy it has expended to move.
However, by 2030, the 54 diesel locomotives of Fortescue, which transport 244 cars full of ore, should be replaced by Infinity Trains with positive energy efficiency.
The trick to performing this impossible act is to use geography and the difference between the outward and return weights to your advantage. Fortescue collects his iron ore from the mountains of the Pilbara region, then takes it to Port Hedland, a coastal town below. This means that the trains go up a hill when they are empty, then go down it once loaded with tons of goods.
gravity motor
The objective is therefore that the trains generate enough energy during the descent to be able to come back up when they are much lighter.
For this, the Infinity Train will use the energy produced by its braking. Modern electric locomotives no longer use only friction brakesbut a technique called “regenerative braking”, which reverses the direction of the electric motor torque, which makes it possible to produce energy.
Usually, this electricity is sent back to the catenaries located above the train, in order to be used elsewhere on the line. In Australian trains, batteries will be able to store this electricity in order to reuse it.
If the angle of descent is sufficient, the weight of the trains should push them hard, allowing regenerative braking to operate at full throttle. So it’s obviously not a true source of infinite energy, but an ingenious gravity-powered generator. If all goes well, it will produce enough energy so that the train can then reassemble empty without having been recharged.
Nevertheless, if the solution would allow, according to the American channel NBCto go without 90 million liters of fuel each year, it would be only a drop in the ocean of the environmental damage of the immensely polluting mining industry.