Just the fact that we're discussing this as a possible working solution and not a some kind of failed novelty slash snake oil slash "green" money waster, it scare me to death
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I mean it takes something like 30 seconds for an average person with electrical knowledge to see that this is trash, the proponents of this "solution" should be laughed out of the room and barred for requesting grants like for ever, much less to get financing for a pilot project.
Because this is my last post on this theme, let me highlight some of the "minor issues" that are obvious, and that's it:
- Road surface quality: you need perfect roads, not good, not average, perfect, practically flat, or else the trolley will jump out of the rail, ask a subway engineer about it.
- Dirt and oxidation: the rail will have to be made of some kind of unobtanium material to be even moderately resistant to oxidation, but you still have dust and leaves and other dirt, in 2-3 months this will need very expensive maintenance or it will be dead, the moving contacts will push crap into the rail. Oh, did I mention dilatation issues in the summer, this is difficult to segment
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- Average speed: this dragging contact will reduce the maximum speed to 4-60Km/h at best, or else the mechanical stuff will blow away.
- Avoiding obstacles while dragging this shit around, or overpassing ? Not really possible, less one destroys the contact and/or the rail.
- Unavoidable pollution: the "evil" diesels with high efficiency engines were accused of producing ozone and nitrous oxide, along with toxic particles, much more than producing CO2 "greenhouse gas", you know what else produces ozone and nitrous oxide, in even larger quantities, that's right, high power electrical sparks, and this dangling contacts, boy, will they spark. Toxic particle you say ? We have these as well: copper/whatever metal oxide + organic residues + high energy sparks and ozone = soluble compounds that will be washed and pollute the surroundings, and heavy metal pollution is almost impossible to get rid of it. Tens of years after the gasoline switched to lead-free, there are laws in Germany to not wash your car around the house due to lead contamination.
- Costs: 10Kg Cu/m x 10000KM = enormous.
So in the end this pathetic replacement of an electrical railway should have been some kind of joking matter, seeing that there are people with higher education in the subject, including doctoral candidate, trying to defend or sustain this thing, depresses me to no end, even for some kind of free discussion, so good bye to this topic forever.
DC1MC