Document Type

Conference Paper

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

2. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, 2.3 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Publication Details

This paper was presented at the 4th International Conference on Sustainable Energy & Environmental Protection, SEEP2010, June 29th – July 2nd, 2010, Bari, Italy

Abstract

This paper describes findings from analysis and simulation in relation to the possible benefits of applying refrigeration based intercooling to the engine of a modern passenger car or haulage vehicle. Initial theoretical analysis showed that, depending on the engine specifications and the boost pressure level of the turbo/supercharger, the power improvement could range from 15–30% and there would be a similar improvement in torque. This meant a smaller engine could be used to do the work of a larger engine. The power required to run the refrigeration system, the space required and the charge air pressure drop due to its passage through the system were all within what were believed to be acceptable limits. It was envisaged that the proposed system would have a secondary function as an air conditioning unit to save space. An engine simulation software package, Ricardo WAVE, was used to simulate the engines that had been investigated in the theoretical calculations. The engines were simulated with and without refrigerated intercooling. There was good correlation between the simulation results and the simpler theoretical analyses. Slight gains in efficiency were predicted, but the main potential benefits were increased power and torque output.


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