Technical feasibility and profitability of a vacuum tunnel for industrial freight transport

In the context of globalization, the consumption of goods from foreign countries becomes more and more common. They are packed, collected, transferred, delivered, and the whole process relies on structures called a supply chain. We may define the containerization as the process to store merchandises in a container, to facilitate its transportation, on a truck, a train or a boat. In term of carbon emission, sea freight is currently the best mode of freight, with 12 grams of emitted CO2 per ton kilometer, against for example 14 in the case of the train. Meanwhile, latter events can be used to illustrate the imperfections of sea freight. Despite the ambitious policy adopted by the International Marine Organization (IMO) in term of safety and prevention of pollution, accidents that jeopardized human life, entire ecosystems or costed billions of euros are reported regularly. In 2021, some of the most notable of these events are the obstruction of the Suez canal by the Evergreen cargo ship, the fire of the MV X-Press Pearl in Sri-Lanka, the black tide in Israel, the 15 sailors kidnapped and the one killed in a pirate attack off Nigeria, or even the estimation of 3000 containers lost in sea (in a three months time) and the danger they represent for leisure boats. Since there must be a massive investment in new infrastructures, we propose an alternative system to train and sea freight, one that should be better on the following aspects : Return on investment, carbon emission per ton kilometer, safety, reliability, privilegiated trade opportunities, and combination opportunity. To be more specific, we propose a tunnel with very low inside air pressure. It would be specialized in freight, in hermetic containers placed on wagons. Since the infrastructure is a significant part of the total costs, we aim to have a continuous flow of wagons, at several hundreds of kilometers per hour, to meet the expected high return on investment. The following thesis gives a first design of such a system from the civil engineering point of view, regarding the demand in term of freight between Europe and Asia.