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The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

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Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#21

Post by dmurray »

dredmorbius wrote: post #15
foota wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that this is more about practicality than anything. There's hardly a need for such high elevation locks I think, and where there is, tunneling is better.

Or freight modalities which can handle grades intrinsically: rail, trucks, tramways, conveyor belts, sluices (for bulk goods). I'm trying to think of regions where water-based high elevation gain might be at least within contemplation.

Inland water-based transport has fallen out of favour these days, not because there's anything wrong with it but because road and rail have got so much better in the last 150 years.

If canal technology had improved at the same rate and we had a magical economic way of building canals over huge mountains, like the one described in the article, of course we'd contemplate building more of them. Connect Denver to San Francisco, connect the Amazon to the Pacific via La Paz, connect Buenos Aires to Santiago, connect the Brahmaputra to the Pearl River over the Himalayas, connect Nagoya to the Sea of Japan via Kyoto.

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#22

Post by amelius »

Taniwha wrote: post #13
ano-ther wrote: post #7

Is there a demonstration of the locks somewhere? From the patent it sounds like a tunnel that gets flooded which lifts the ship. The tunnel must be really large because it has to fit the ship at an angle and not just head on. https://patents.google.com/patent/US955317A/en

It's really more a pipe than a tunnel, the whole pipe needs to be able to support the weight of the boat and all the water to the top of each step

What is the difference between a pipe and a tunnel in this case?

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#23

Post by K0balt »

There’s no violation of physics here, simply the energy transfer of potential energy from water moving downhill.

Given a sufficient source of water above the highest tunnel, this seems like a remarkably efficient system, if almost certainly not economically viable to construct or maintain.

If we simplify a bit and assume that all tunnels are of the same size, with the volume of water needed to fill one tunnel plus the net displacement of the freight going up versus down, every barge in every tunnel is moved one tunnel forward on each slope, going up or down one side of the system. It’s interesting because there is automatic energy recovery “regenerative braking” because the displacement of the descending freight reduces the water consumption in proportion to the amount used to raise an equal amount of ascending freight. Pretty cool.

It would probably be more cost effective to use that same water source to build a hydroelectric powered electric locomotive, but -theoretically- the canal system should be able to move more freight.

In practice, i would bet on the railway, especially if descending trains fed energy back into the system to help power ascending ones. As for economics of construction and maintenance, the train would probably be orders of magnitude more cost effective.

Nonetheless, an elegant idea with an idyllic implementation. Kind of has a “clever” code smell though lol.

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#24

Post by _visgean »

dmurray wrote: post #21
dredmorbius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or freight modalities which can handle grades intrinsically: rail, trucks, tramways, conveyor belts, sluices (for bulk goods). I'm trying to think of regions where water-based high elevation gain might be at least within contemplation.

Inland water-based transport has fallen out of favour these days, not because there's anything wrong with it but because road and rail have got so much better in the last 150 years. If canal technology had improved at the same rate and we had a magical economic way of building canals over huge mountains, like the one described in the article, of course we'd contemplate building more of them. Connect Denver to San Fra…

It is still somehow alive in Germany https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/EN/Articles/WS/waterways-as-...

> Up to 240 million tonnes of bulk goods are transported per year via the German Federal waterways, which amounts to around 65 billion tonne-kilometres. This equals almost 75 per cent of the goods transport by railway in this country or about 14 million lorry journeys.

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#25

Post by ajb »

Animats wrote: post #14

That thing is scary. If a boat on an uphill tunnel doesn't keep moving forward to keep up with the rising water, the boat is forced against the top of the tunnel and everybody drowns.

It's for freight, though, and if I understand it correctly, the force of the upward movement is automatically converted to horizontal movement by the pulley/rail system. So there's potentially no need for anyone to be on the boat as it transits the tunnel.

Not that that this looks practical - the tunnels would be huge, just for starters.

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#26

Post by ithkuil »

metabagel wrote: post #5
ur-whale wrote: post #4

This was back in the days when folks in Europe were still capable of doing really ambitious technical things. That particular project may have turned not to be economically viable, but it was at the very least thought of and studied seriously. That kind of burning flame has now died miserably, and all Europe is now capable of doing is keeping the lights on.

High speed rail? The large hadron collider at CERN? Also, Rail Baltica… https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/09/16/the-high-speed-rail...

Not to mention that this thing hasn't been actually built.

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#27

Post by RajT88 »

K0balt wrote: post #23

There’s no violation of physics here, simply the energy transfer of potential energy from water moving downhill. Given a sufficient source of water above the highest tunnel, this seems like a remarkably efficient system, if almost certainly not economically viable to construct or maintain. If we simplify a bit and assume that all tunnels are of the same size, with the volume of water needed to fill one tunnel plus th…

> Given a sufficient source of water above the highest tunnel

I keep looking at this and coming back to this point. Where on earth can you get that volume of water that high up reliably year round?

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#28

Post by kryptiskt »

ur-whale wrote: post #4

This was back in the days when folks in Europe were still capable of doing really ambitious technical things. That particular project may have turned not to be economically viable, but it was at the very least thought of and studied seriously. That kind of burning flame has now died miserably, and all Europe is now capable of doing is keeping the lights on.

The Fehmarn Belt fixed link[0] is under construction right now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#29

Post by jcranmer »

dredmorbius wrote: post #9

I'm not an expert in this area, though the efficiencies of canal systems have interested me greatly in recent years. What's interesting to me is that even today, few canal systems seem to have elevation gains of more than a few metres. Among the greatest lifts I'm aware of are the Erie Canal (no longer commercially operated, though accessible by pleasure craft), which rises 174m (571 ft) above sea level. Canada's Tre…

The C&O Canal (built as a competitor to the Erie Canal) has a 184m (605 ft) lift to get to Cumberland, which is where they gave up trying to reach the Ohio River, haven been beaten by their competitor, the B&O Railroad.

Per Wikipedia, their original planned route had another 2700 ft of total elevation change to make the Ohio River, about 4 times what they had already done.

Pennsylvania's answer to the Erie Canal was the Main Line of Public Works, which was a canal with the hard parts replaced with railroads. The Juniata Division alone was as big a lift as the C&O or Erie, and there was another canal of comparable lift to get down into Pittsburgh.

Re: The Dream of an Alpine Waterway

#30

Post by bamboozled »

ur-whale wrote: post #4

This was back in the days when folks in Europe were still capable of doing really ambitious technical things. That particular project may have turned not to be economically viable, but it was at the very least thought of and studied seriously. That kind of burning flame has now died miserably, and all Europe is now capable of doing is keeping the lights on.

Personally glad they had the foresight not to do stupid things like this to beautiful natural environments...the only thing I find really sad about Europe is the lack of old growth forest.
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