Experiment on Cylindrical Thermomagnetic Engine for Exhaust Heat Recovery.

Abstract

In this study, a thermomagnetic engine is developed in order to recover the energy from the exhaust heat source. This engine can directly convert low grade energy into kinetic energy. The engine essentially consists of a rotor made of temperature sensitive magnetic material and a permanent magnet. When an object made of this material has temperature distribution in the magnetic field, the force is generated to the direction from the low temperature side to the high temperature side due to magnetic pressure.This paper is described for the fundamental performance of the thermomagnetic engine. The magnetic shunt alloy with the large temperature gradient of magnetic flux density was used as the temperature sensitive magnetic material. The performance characteristics such as power, torque and resistance, and the relation between the temperature of the rotor and the rotation speed are measured. The net power is a maximum value of 0.3 W at the rotation speed of 0.15 rps. The resistance loss is of 0.18 W at the maximum point of the power characteristic, so the total power is estimated to be of 0.47 W. A heat transfer coefficient using the temperature of the rotor is calculated.