Energy Recovery from Exhaust Gas of Diesel and Petrol Engine by Turbo-electric Generator

Abstract

A turbo-electric generator has been placed on the exhaust port of the petrol and diesel engines to investigate the possibility of recovering energy from the exhaust gas. Turbo-electric generator is a combination of a turbocharger and a generator. The aim of the study is to find the possibility and effectiveness of the turbo-electric generator for recovering the energy from the exhaust gas of an engine. The test has been conducted on the two engines, i.e. first one is TD 202 small test engine bed (diesel engine) and another one is Honda CG125 cc (petrol engine) motorcycle. Two types of motor i.e. DC motor and AC motor have been used as generators by altering the way a motor works. Firstly, a DC motor is used as a generator in the turbo-electric generator for both test engines. The results show that turbo-electric generator recover less than 1% energy of the exhaust gas for both engines when a DC motor is used as a generator (TD 202 and Honda CG125 cc motorcycle). But in case of Honda CG125 cc motorcycle, the percentage of recovering energy is comparatively higher than the TD 202 test engine. The experiment is further extended by using an AC motor as a generator only for the Honda CG125 cc motorcycle. The results show better energy recovering from exhaust gas through turbo-electric generator, which is more than 1% of exhaust gas. The results reveal that the engine speed and the mass flow rate of the exhaust gas play a major role in harvesting the energy from the exhaust gas. Moreover, it is found that the turbo-electric generator module provides good efficiency when an AC motor is used as a generator in the module. The experimental results have been compared with available literature.