Northwestern University Freight Rail Infrastructure & Energy Network Decarbonization (NUFRIEND) Framework

NUFRIEND is a comprehensive industry-oriented tool to simulate the deployment of new energy technologies across U.S. freight rail networks. Scenario-specific simulation and optimization modules provide estimates for carbon reductions, capital investments, costs of carbon reductions, and operational impacts for any given deployment profile.

Public Dashboard is available here: https://nufriend.transportation.northwestern.edu/.

Demonstration videos are available here:

• NUFRIEND Dashboard: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dx1jz3Y2dil5v-HC94EwBk4utXNnyPcj/view?usp=share_link
• NUFIREND Rollout Optimization Framework: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GxRHQ3dJDNbQLOKKMjsPROvc0wGu8Ph9/view?usp=share_link

For more details, please refer to https://www.transportation.northwestern.edu/research/featured-reports/locomotives.html.

Project Sponsor: ARPA-E, U.S. Department of Energy

BY: Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)

Principal Investigators: Hani S. Mahmassani (NUTC), Pablo Durango-Cohen (NUTC), Amgad Elgowainy (ANL), Yan (Joann) Zhou (ANL)

Researchers: Adrian Hernandez (NUTC), Max Ng (NUTC), ‪Choudhury Nazib Siddique (ANL)

The transportation sector is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the US, with the freight sector showing the greatest challenge to decarbonize. However, recent advances in lower-carbon fuels, battery technologies, and hydrogen fuels have provided viable alternatives to diesel for the traditionally hard-to-decarbonize freight rail industry.

Researchers at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory have developed an analytical framework to aid railroads in planning the deployment of alternative locomotive energy technologies across their networks to decarbonize their operations. To make the analysis accessible, a flexible industry-oriented tool has been created that caters to individual user needs and provides insights with respect to costs, emissions, and operational performance metrics for the evaluation of various decarbonization deployment strategies.

This research has been funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) as part of a project titled “LOwering CO2: Models to Optimize Train Infrastructure, Vehicles, and Energy Storage (LOCOMOTIVES)” under the US Department of Energy.

The Northwestern University Freight Rail Infrastructure & Energy Network Decarbonization (NUFRIEND) Dashboard is now available for public use on the NUTC website at: https://nufriend.transportation.northwestern.edu.

Here, users can analyze different decarbonization technologies and deployment strategies on US rail networks to understand the benefits and challenges of freight rail sustainability investments. Users can learn to use the dashboard by watching the Demo Video or reading the NUFRIEND Dashboard User Guide for more information.

In addition, NUTC has published a series of informational pieces, titled NUFRIEND Insights, that break down different problem components in greater depth.

To cite our work, please use: Hernandez, Adrian and Ng, Max T.M., C. Siddique, P. L. Durango-Cohen, A. Elgowainy, H. S. Mahmassani, M. Wang, Y. Zhou, (In Press) “Evaluation of rail decarbonization alternatives: Framework and application,” Transportation Research Record, 2023.