The Internet of Goods is Italian, a transportation revolution ready to be realized. Called Pipenet, it is a network of vacuum tubes in which magnetically levitated capsules will travel at 1,500 kilometers per hour throughout the country, and in perspective Europe. The merit of ingenuity and common sense: instead of just the magnetic levitation of Shanghai trains, it also has a vacuum that allows for no air friction, reaching 1500 kilometers per hour and beyond; instead of the mammoth size of Hyperloop, the passenger transport project whose main company went bankrupt at the end of 2023, it has small capsules carrying two europallets each, 500 kilograms of goods, with a transport capacity of at least 3600 tons per hour. Driving Change spoke about it with Prof. Franco Cotana, who has been fighting to develop and establish the project for 25 years, and is now Ad of RSE, Research for the Energy System, a subsidiary of the Gestore dei Servizi Energetici for the development of research activities in the electro-energy sector, with particular reference to national strategic projects.
When and how was the project born?
Pipenet was born 25 years ago, on the one hand from the idea that road transport systems, especially for goods, were already experiencing saturation, but also creating, due to the promiscuity of road transport, issues related to safety. In spite of New Jerseys, guardrails and other systems that have been adopted, we all know how many accidents, even unfortunately fatal ones, almost always or very often involve vehicles carrying goods. On the other, from the emergence of the issue of climate change and the need to devise a system that could reduce the consumption of fossil fuels in transportation: road transport, but I would say in general transport, is one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize. So we envisioned an innovative system that, compared to railways, also had the advantage of a high transport capacity, but a lower environmental and also laying impact. Some of the inspiration comes from the fiber optics that have supplanted copper wires. In the same cable ducts where copper wires used to have a huge diameter to carry telephone calls, with a very thin plexiglass wire, the optical fiber, it has been possible to carry much more information and decrease the size. Something similar arises in transport: Pipenet increases the speed of transport by reducing the weight carried per instant, but since the speed is high, the transport capacity is important: at least one ton per second. There are 3600 seconds in an hour….
How did you conjugate it?
This idea could find a technical solution in a system that had some important background elements. First, we know that when we increase the speed of any medium in the air, in the earth’s surface, we encounter a huge loss, which varies even with the cube of the speed, which is due to wheel friction and aerodynamic friction that prevents us from exceeding certain speeds, because the energy lost becomes so high that we lose any advantage. So friction had to be eliminated. To do this, for example, planes adopt a stratagem: they go to high altitudes where the air is thinner. So Concorde would go up to a height of 30 kilometers to reach a speed faster than the speed of sound. The only thing to do was to enclose this kind of small railroad inside a tube and evacuate the air. Evacuating the air meant eliminating that aerodynamic friction factor that also characterizes high-speed trains instead, because when you exceed 60-70 kilometers per hour, aerodynamic friction is preponderant. On the other hand, however, going in a vacuum at speeds of 1,000-1,500 up to 2,000 km per hour requires a change in the type of contact with the rail or fixed support, aiming for magnetic levitation that also eliminates rolling friction toward the rail.
What were the previous experiences?
By the late 1990s, studies and research on magnetic levitation trains had already been developed. Such is the case with the one that went into commercial operation in 2005, and still is, between Shanghai Airport and the 30-kilometer-long Pudong district. It goes more than 450-500 km per hour, unfortunately, however, with very high costs precisely because of aerodynamic friction; experiments have also been done in Japan, but if you want to go faster you have to eliminate air. From these ideas we start to study the practice at the University of Perugia, then the Umbrian university hosts a center called CIRIAF – Interuniversity Center for Research on Pollution by Physical Agents – which brings together about ten universities in Italy by bringing together scientific expertise from various fields, and we come up with a standard. Patents were made in 2005, and thanks to that a first important step was reached when on January 26, 2005 a collaboration agreement was signed between the University of Perugia, whose Magnifico Rector was Professor Francesco Bistoni, and AnsaldoBreda Trasporti, with then President Engineer Fausto Cutuli, at the headquarters of Finmeccanica, now Leonardo. Agreement lasting 10 years until 2015 and then it could have been extended. But unfortunately Ansaldo Breda Trasporti is lost, Finmeccanica transforms and sells this asset, which today is called Hitachi and is located in Naples. So some industrial supports that were very important are lost. Nevertheless, the research goes on, funding is received both from the Ministry of the Environment and partly from the European Union, and a prototype is built in Terni 100 meters long with two small stations.
A resilient project, in short. How has it evolved in recent years?
Studies and research have continued to be done on various types of magnetic suspension including with superconductors, using sublimation and other techniques. These studies then led around 2020 to the definition of a standard that is the subject of a project that was funded because of a call for Southern Regions. The project is called LOVE4PIPENET and is led by Naples’ Partenope University. It consists of the realization of the laboratory for the testing of electronic components that have been patented, conceived in an even more innovative conception than the initial idea, without prejudice to the technologies we have described: vacuum technology, magnetic levitation, and electric propulsion (linear and nonlinear) of the capsules. The laboratory, which is about to be launched these days, will allow vacuum testing of even a climate chamber 10 to the minus 5, a very high vacuum, and all the various components that will then form the essential elements of this infrastructure. At the same time, on December 17, 2024, RSE, which in the meantime is led by yours truly who is familiar with these projects, signed an agreement with RFI that allows studies and projects related to this technology to be done. The expectation is that the small size – we are not talking about huge diameters of 5-6 meters similar to tunnels just like road tunnels, but of 1.5 meters, 1.60 meters at most – can flank the Italian railway infrastructure. So we want to study all those interferences with viaducts, tunnels and normal embankments of railway appurtenances that characterize the national network. So we hypothesize thanks to this agreement – after the components have been built in Nola – to design a first facility at RFI’s laboratory test field, which is located in San Donato di Bologna, where Alstom’s hydrogen trains are also tested, because there is both space, tracks and a facility circuit that lends itself well to these new experiments.
Other overly ambitious projects have failed…
Over the course of these years, we have seen ideas such as Hyperloop emerge after our patenting, which in some ways were inspired somewhat by the same technology but which were doomed to failure because they claimed to transport people and especially in this case with very large dimensions, with weights of tens of tons. Just do the math: the radii of curvature have to be almost infinite, that is, we have to go straight all the time because when at speeds of over a thousand kilometers per hour you start curving enormous thrusts arise. Instead, we aimed for smaller but more frequent dimensions: 500 kg in all, 600 kg including cargo and all the ballast and all the devices for each capsule. But the most important thing that differentiates our project from Hyperloop is that the idea is to build a real Internet-like network for light goods, that is, a Physical Internet that even Europe hopes to have in place by 2050.
How can a Physical Internet be realized?
If we take Hyperloop we know very well that you go from point A to point B, from there you need huge stations to change direction. None of this in our idea: we always have two tubes that go side by side to form a single structure where these two tubes are communicating with each other. There is a tube made like an ellipse that collects at least two small tracks, one on which the capsules travel at 1,500 kilometers per hour, and one inside the same vacuum tube that does the up and down between stations and allows-thanks to an innovative patented idea that is the capsule holder-to transship a capsule from one capsule holder to another. The capsule is pressurized and holds the goods, two euro pallets weighing 500 kg. We envision that every 30 km or so there will be a station, because 10 km is needed to accelerate the capsules to the synchronization speed at 1500 km per hour, pair them with an empty capsule carrier that is already traveling on the network at that speed; the two capsule carriers are docked, and the capsule can move from the capsule carrier that has just been accelerated to the one on the high-speed line and continue on to its next destination. This technique also holds true in reverse: if a capsule is traveling at high speed but arriving in Florence from Rome or Milan has to stop or has to divert to Livorno or another location, the capsule that is traveling is flanked by a capsule carrier on the second tube and transships, and then is slowed down to the next station and then ejected or diverted to another cross network. This creates a true interconnected network, with logistics that also preserve the vacuum. We have devised stations with depressurization and vacuum chambers that allow for vacuum preservation: a capsule that has to leave has to subtract air from this chamber, and this air that is subtracted can go to supply air to the capsule that is coming, and vice versa. An efficient system that can move at least a ton per second, but practically without it taking energy from the grid because all the energy it needs is produced by the same infrastructure through photovoltaic panels, with batteries that are laid out all along the Tyrrhenian ridge, for example from Reggio Calabria to Milan. The idea is to have at least 25-30 stations and a travel time from Reggio Calabria to Milan of less than an hour.
How do the freight-carrying capsules move?
The capsules are allocated inside capsule carriers. We have a kind of track, but it does not come in contact with the capsule holder, which has a magnetic suspension: it does not have as in the railway wheels that turn over the track. The track is used to guide the capsule carrier, though. The capsule is harnessed inside this capsule holder, which connects with others and allows the capsules to be transshipped. The capsule has a length of about 4 meters and a diameter of one meter twenty, one meter thirty, because the whole tube has a maximum diameter of one meter sixty; there are always two tubes, so we can imagine a somewhat elliptical tube. These capsule carriers are spaced on the same line one behind the other by about 500 meters and they all travel at the same speed, this prevents them from colliding. With the linear electric motor, a kind of North-South wave is created, we have to imagine those capsule carriers immersed in this wave dragging a whole series of capsule carriers along the line at the same synchronization speed. Passenger transport will also be a possibility in the future, but only when it is proven that everything works, that there are no accidents, because the safety requirements for passengers are enormously higher than for freight. So for now we are focusing on cargo, then in the future you never know, we could also imagine putting three or two people, if they are more comfortable, in these small capsules that could still accommodate passengers as well. For now we are focusing on freight, on just in time, on eliminating all warehouses, especially for perishable goods, the ones that have to have the cold chain, because the speed of delivery is so high that many steps are skipped with very high system efficiency, from the cold chain system to the warehouses system.
What impact can this type of transportation have?
We can imagine a factory where components are made in different locations and then arrive with just-in-time at a point where they are assembled. Seventy percent of the goods can travel in assembly boxes of this size and with these weights, so we take 70 percent of the trucks, maybe even 80 percent of the trucks off the roads. Of course when there’s exceptional transport, for goodness sake, if it’s exceptional it’s exceptional, but we could eliminate environmental pollution but more importantly we could do a real real deep decarbonization in transport which is one of the hardest sectors, along with buildings, to tackle, hard to abate as they say.
How fast will goods travel?
We have assumed 1500 kilometers per hour for the time being, although the test speed will be about 2000, however, the operating speed we envision on 1500. The radii of curvature are also compatible with those of high-speed rail alongside the HST. There is another important aspect that we have envisioned: seismic isolation from vibration between trains and this new infrastructure, which will rest on pylons with seismic isolators that prevent the transmission of vibrations between one and the other system.
Is transshipment your idea?
Yes, and we have obtained a new patent on this very technique that allows the possibility of creating a real network. We are very keen on the fact that this system is a network, pipenet means network of pipes, and it is meant to be like the Internet: a network not for the transport of information but in this case for the packet transport of matter of any kind, as long as it is non-hazardous-but this is a test that will be done at the entrance before shipment, this is also planned. Pipenet is absolutely an Italian project. Just as there is the snail for sending e-mails, we have identified the paragraph symbol to signify the send-to (§) of the goods: this is also part of the Italian idea, just as the prototypes were made in Italy, we have one for the fairs that we take around. You could say that we have taken inspiration from pneumatic mail, however the concept is completely different: the propulsion is no longer air pressure, remember that pneumatic mail had very high energy consumption, here instead it is just the opposite, we have very low consumption and the most important thing is that 70 percent of the energy that is used to accelerate the capsules is also recovered in braking, because by not dispensing it by not having friction with the air we are able to recover it. So we have a very high efficiency, we can produce maybe more energy than it takes to move one ton per second.
Will Pipenet also reach the islands?
That’s right. The diameter of the pipes is not random, the maximum that can be put in place by the biggest support ships that lay pipelines for methane was chosen, they have this size of 58-60 inches, one meter and 60 maximum: these are ready-made technologies, it’s not like you have to invent them. Even we are thinking that if pipelines were unused to refunctionalize them through small robots to install segments of the binary structure inside, however, this is still under study.
Is this an Italian or European project?
We have to imagine an internet network for goods that is European in scale, which would give an extraordinary boost to the economy. Imagine what it would mean to have the competitive advantage of having spare parts, items of any kind in such a short time. Freight rates are being studied, and they make it possible to optimize transport capacity: there are periods, for example overnight, when the line is a bit more scarce, and if there is no delivery priority-if you have to transport bags of cement, there is no need for them to arrive with just-in-time, in a few minutes-then the prices come down, with a relatively modest impact on the amount of goods to be transported. If, on the other hand, I have a 2,000-euro cashmere sweater that needs to be tried on instantly, we have provided drones in the stations with organized urban airways with safety points in the road crossing, with a control tower, with slots that are sold. A real transportation infrastructure that connects these logistics all the way to the balcony or window of the house. I can try on the pullover, I don’t like it, I return it, and the drone takes it away, and maybe on its way back it takes away the wet: this is also part of a supply chain that wants to imagine a future where the transportation of goods is fully automated to and from homes. For the wet waste, we have already designed energy towers where it is converted to biomethane, which can be used in the neighborhood and digested as fertilizer for urban parks. It is an idea of a future of a super-organized, but above all, super-low impact on the environment and in terms of risk for people who will not find trucks in the streets.