System Simulations to Evaluate the Potential Efficiency of Humid Air Motors
2013-01-2646
10/14/2013
- Event
- Content
- In the quest for efficiency improvement in heavy duty truck engines, waste heat recovery could play a valuable role. The evaporative cycle is a waste heat recovery technology aimed at improving efficiency and decreasing emissions. A humid air motor (HAM) uses the waste heat from the exhaust of the engine to humidify the inlet air; this humid air, with higher specific heat, reduces NOx emission to a greater extent [1] [2]. Despite this benefit of emission reduction, the increase or decrease in efficiency of the humid air motor compared to the conventional engine is not discussed in the literature [3] [4] [5]. In this paper, an attempt is made to study the efficiency of the HAM using system model simulations of a 13-liter heavy duty Volvo engine with a humidifier. The commercial software GT-SUITE is used to build the system model and to perform the simulations. The efficiency improvement of the HAM comes from the expansion of the vapor mass flow produced as a result of humidification. An effort is also made to understand the relationship between the humidified engine and its efficiency.
- Pages
- 9
- Citation
- Arunachalam, P., Tuner, M., Tunestal, P., Johansson, B. et al., "System Simulations to Evaluate the Potential Efficiency of Humid Air Motors," SAE Technical Paper 2013-01-2646, 2013, https://doi.org/10.4271/2013-01-2646.