Adapting Waste Heat Recovery Technologies for Off-Highway Vehicles

Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) technologies aim at recovering part of the otherwise wasted heat in the exhaust of a combustion engine and convert it to useful power, resulting in lower fuel consumption and pollutant emissions. Brunel University and Entropea Labs jointly with Thermadynamics Rail in the US, have optimized WHR technologies, to be retrofitted in Diesel-electric locomotives. Experience gained in the selection, sizing, design and manufacturing of the components of a Steam and Organic Rankine Cycle Waste Heat Recovery system for large displacement diesel engines will be applied to increase the OHV diesel engine fuel economy by up to 10%. The proposed technology will be modular, non-invasive and reversible enabling it to be scaled to across the range of new engine production irrespective of manufacturer while also being retrofittable to the large number of OHV engines already in service. Moreover, the technology and expertise will be further exploited by adapting it and scaling it to other transport and stationery power generation applications.