Quote:
Originally Posted by t vago
There are, to my knowledge, only three proven effective methods of reclaiming exhaust heat energy to do something useful.
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Er, the examples you gave were of reclaiming blowdown pressure though :O
Blowdown surely represents a loss but with perfect recovery you'd be only getting back maybe like 5-10% more energy. It has its place of course, I'd love a blowdown powered alternator using a free flowing turbine
Would reduce noise too.
I was talking more about a secondary heat engine running off the thermal energy itself :O BMW turbosteamer is probably the closest one to production, and I don't see that happening for some time. Thermoelectrics seem to be at the very least several years off from even viable prototypes. There's also SMA engines, whose progress I haven't really bothered to follow, though I understand they have a somewhat low theoretical peak efficiency by design.