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Old 02-06-2016, 05:22 PM   #5 (permalink)
RedDevil
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Red Devil - '11 Honda Insight Elegance
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Wait a minute - you mean a turbo on the air intake, powering an alternator by the difference between atmospheric pressure before and the part vacuum behind the throttle valve, right?

That may work in theory, but you will have a hard time finding a fitting turbine.
Also it would only work on part load; if you idle not enough air is flowing through the turbine to keep it spinning despite the large difference in pressure, and at WOT there is no pressure difference to spool up a turbo.

I confess having thought along these lines myself.
At 2000 RPM at 50% load my 1339 cc engine pumps 22 liters of 50% vacuumized air per second, that dissipates about 1.1 kW of power over the throttle plate.
If you can get 25% of that in electricity, it may just be enough to sing it out for the day without an alternator, but you'd need to charge the battery at home. A bigger battery, preferably a lithium iron one, would be advisable in this setup.

Anyway, subscribed...!
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Last edited by RedDevil; 02-06-2016 at 05:38 PM..
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