Technologies of using energy harvesting systems in motor vehicles - energy from exhaust system

Abstract

The energy demand in the automotive sector is significant and fuel and vehicle maintenance costs constitute a significant part of road transport expenditure. Over the past few decades, there has been a great interest in various types of alternative fuels and the production of economical internal combustion engines. The development in this sector is dictated by the greater interest of producers in the protection of the natural environment, which is visible and enforced by legislation in the form of stricter emission standards. For these reasons, more and more often systems are sought that will save energy and cause less losses in the so-called wasted energy which is dissipated. The efficiency of modern combustion engines is about 40%, the rest of the energy is lost. As a result, the search continues for systems that will use this part of energy to power certain systems or micro-sensors in the vehicle. This study presents energy recovery systems in motor vehicles, the interest of which has increased in the last decade. The attention was paid to the changes taking place in the automotive industry, current development trends and directions of academic research. The possibilities of energy recovery from such vehicle systems as energy recovered during braking, damping energy in the vehicle suspension from vibrations of the internal combustion engine with particular emphasis on energy recovery from the exhaust system of the internal combustion engine were presented. Based on the literature study of the presented research of various research centres, it can be concluded that there is a huge potential in the harvesting of loss of thermal energy. It is possible to recover thermal energy from approx. 100 W for passenger cars to over 800 W for large diesel engines in trucks. Globally, energy recovery systems can be used in modern vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, but also with hybrid or electric drive.