exhaust/engine cooler heat recuperator

[Creativity]

Hey,
i was working lately on an idea of inexpensive/light bolt on system for heat recuperation in an internal combustion engine.It has to be inexpensive in order to become popular or used by manufacturers.It has to be light and occupy small space,because this is important for any system in a car.It has to be bolt on,so no changes should be made to the engine itself,reducing the risks of installation and level of knowledge of instalator needed to bolt it on.
As we all know about 50% or more of the fuel energy gets dispatched into the air as a heat.25%% goes into the exhaust (but also sound energy is there,so not all energy is heat there) and around 20% into water cooling of the engine.Now imagine if we could get just like 10% of all this wasted energy in say electricity,would it be nice ? we could take off the load on engine caused by alternator(when cruising it can be like 10% of the engine power!=>direct 10% saving in fuel costs when cruising !) i invented a small system (+7 to 10 kg) on cheap parts that can recuperate engine peripheral elements.

see the picture attached.It is only a case for a exhaust gases heat re-cuperator.Similar design operating underly low pressure and liquid to liquid exchanger can be applied for coolant heat recuperation.Exhaust gases heat manifold to high temp,sufficient to produce amounts of steam.I would use copper pipe wound up around the manifold(it could be then all insulated termically from the engine compartment,reducing ambient air temp en adding power to the engine).In this pipe water would be injected by high pressure water pump.When pressure goes low enough a pressure sensor is used to notify water pump to inject more.Blow off valve sets up upper steam pressure limit.Steam is fed into the steam turbine/engine connected to the alternator.Used steam is condensed in a condenser(cooled by ambient air) reducing the backpressure to add turbine efficiency.Condensed water can be reused by water pump.
in this system alternator would be fully driven by exhaust heat,thus disconnected from engine shaft.

Second idea was to use peltier thermo electric couples,they are small and produce electricity directly from heat.Unfortunately efficiency is very low (4,5-9%).Max temperature of operation is around 250*C.Cold side of peltier has to be cooled as efficiently as possible adding extra problems.I could see peltiers as an intermediate part of coolant system of engine.Coolant would be then cooled down via heat transfer through peltier stack to the secondary cooland circuit with engine cooler.So engine would have to transfer all its heat though peltiers into the cooler.This setup would satisfy reuse of existing car parts and producing extra electricity from waste heat.

To make the steam producing unit in a simple way is to use some copper pipes(used for sanitary installations).Inexpensive thermo couples are available to serve as temp sensor.Home water heaters are equipped with safely pressure blow off valves (in case of steam formation inside of the heater).Water condenser could be an car airco cooler(works on high pressure and easily fitted on the car).As for now i don't know where to find a water pump that can pump small amounts of water (2cc per sec,120 cc per minute with pressure of 6,3 bar -90psi).Turbine my latest idea is to use the pneumatic wrench,it operates on 6,3 bar pressure and allows power output up to 0,8 kW and operates on speeds up to 10 000 rpm (can be directly mounted to the alternator).This wrench is not big and inexpensive.


So that's my idea :0 hope u have some comments!

[Creativity]

or maybe we can use a Stirling engine instead of the turbine? but those are very expensive i guess,no?

[argona369]

yes, it's a good idea,

there's some good links in this thread.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free_energy/message/30552

Cliff,

[Creativity]

interesting:

http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200602170430/FREE/60213002

well once more somone was faster than i was  lots of brains,the same thinking,NO ACTION 
But it gets me even more mad that its not in the production yet! it would save us all like 10% of fuel costs all this years,and think about the CO2.... 

edit:
yeah but still if we wait untill the car developers will incorporate it we will be still loosing this years,and all the cars that are already there...it gives me new power to acctually build those sytsems myself,as chep as possible and as simple as possible to fit it on existing cars.Besides there are still areas for improvement,like engine radiant heat loses,redesign of the the intake and applaying an on-board H2 production as a fuel additive+all the changes to the engine it allows.I feel that reasonably speaking we can get like +30% on extracting of fuel power.Then incorporate it into the turbo-diesel hybrid car can yeld a big advance... a car running 100km on 2,5-3 l of diesel will be true.

[b0rg13]

we should have been in electric cars years ago, really need to get right away from oil/gasoline, while your idea might work and save what ? %10 ?......, go electric and save %100 and be done with it.