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Old 04-28-2020, 01:34 PM   #7 (permalink)
Ecky
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I would be reluctant to put a steam boiler in my 1800lb car. Certainly there are BTUs to capture, but the exhaust piping isn't that hot - I can put my hand on it only a few feet from the engine, because it takes so little energy to push my car around. It might not boil water unless the exhaust gasses had to pass through a heat exchanger, and there's not a good place for this in my tiny exhaust tunnel. R134a, that might work better. Half the year it's below freezing outside and the system might not work at all in those conditions unless it was fully insulated. If It were insulated and it stopped working for some reason, there would be a risk of explosion from heated and expanding gas in a closed loop, so we'd need a purge valve of some kind. Hmm...

This isn't my field, and I don't know roughly how much or little energy it could capture, or have more than the vaguest ideas about how much energy it could capture. We need someone more educated to give an opinion.
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