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Heat Recovery systems could provide extra power
Hello All; It's been way too long since I posted here. I ran across this interesting article in the March 2009 issue of RaceTech International magazine www.racetechmag.com about converting the excess exhaust heat from race car engines into extra horsepower. The average internal combustion engine loses about 35% of the available energy contained in the fuel out the exhaust pipe in the form of heat. Exhaust Energy Recovery Systems (EERS) differs from KERS in that the power is available immediately and even at low speeds there is some benefit. But the more interesting aspect of it is that the recovery of energy from the heat in the exhaust in addition to providing more power also increases the efficiency of the engine. This means decreased fuel consumption. The preliminary data suggest that the total amount of energy in the exhaust of a modern racing engine is approximately 180%-190% of the crankshaft energy produced by the normal internal combustion engine. Even if you could recover 25% of that energy it is a significant amount of extra power available. Another source of info can found here
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by xorpheous on -
Isn't a turbo a basic type of EERS? The various schemes they show in the benchmarking section of their website, heat2power seems to be working simply on more elaborate turbo schemes. Whereas this is a good thing, will it be something that the IRL should invest in? It will be expensive to develop in a race car, and although I'd love to see all manner of innovation, especially in engine technologies, I'm skeptical of whether the IRL brass will share that opinion. They may view it as unnecessarily increasing team budgets.
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Permalink Reply by Gilbert K. Arnold on -
If I understood the article right, the turbo uses the kinetic energy of the exhaust. What the "Heat2Power" people are saying is, even after the kinetic energy is extracted from the exhaust gas, there is still energy that can be extracted from the heat energy of the exhaust gasses. A significant amount of energy (so they claim). I think you will grant there is significant heat coming out of the exhaust of a turbo race engine. Remember all the exhaust gasses are doing is spinning a turbine, There has been, to my knowledge, no attempt recover any of the heat energy from the exhaust stream. Ultimately the question of whether it is used is Cost and Weight.
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Permalink Reply by Gilbert K. Arnold on
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Permalink Reply by Gilbert K. Arnold on
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I'm sorry. That second link should have been this
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