Abstract
Within a large, state-funded, Italian National Project aimed to test the feasibility of an on-the-road prototype of a mild hybrid city vehicle, one of the tasks was to conceive, design and implement an innovative turbocharger that would allow for some energy recovery. The selected vehicle is propelled by a 3-cylinder, 998 cc turbocharged engine (the 66 kW Mitsubishi-Smart W451). The idea is to implement two types of energy recovery: one via the new turbocharger and one through a standard braking energy recovery (also known as KERS). The study of the former is the object of this paper. The proposed turbocharger configuration consists of mechanically separated, electrically coupled compressor and turbine, possibly mounting only slightly modified commercial equipment to reduce construction costs. This paper reports the results of the calculation of the behavior of the new turbocharging group across the entire engine operating range and describes the preliminary design of the unit. An accurate simulation of a mixed (urban and extra-urban) driving mission demonstrates that a net saving of about 5.6% can be attained by the installation of the novel turbocharger unit.
Highlights
Issues related to the road transportation system and the proposed solutions are currently being debated worldwide. The crux of this debate is whether to shift to electric vehicles (EVs) because of their purported “zero emission capability” and high conversion efficiency, or to devise novel configurations for the gasoline fueled engines
In the configuration proposed here, instead, all of the energy of the exhaust gases is exploited by the turbine to generate electrical power that can be channeled into the battery pack
The extra power of 10 could be conveyed to an auxiliary electric motor for additional propulsion [20,25,26]. 7Such an option though will be considered only after the conclusion of the bench tests on the complete unit (ICE + turbocharger + battery pack)
Summary
Issues related to the road transportation system and the proposed solutions are currently being debated worldwide. The design concept is to mechanically disconnect the compressor/turbine unit, powering the compressor with a dedicated electric motor and extracting extra work via a turbine-driven generator Such a decoupling, currently implemented only on Formula cars and developed at prototype stage by the Garret corporation [4], allows for both machines to be designed so that they operate very close to their respective maximum efficiency within the expected real operating ranges (dictated by the engine map). In the configuration proposed here, instead, all of the energy of the exhaust gases is exploited by the turbine to generate electrical power that can be channeled into the battery pack Such a configuration is called a mild hybrid vehicle (MHV)
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