Nozzle Steam Piston Expander for Engine Exhaust Energy Recovery

This paper presents a concept for new piston expander utilizing nozzle as part of a secondary steam cycle to recover exhaust energy. A commercial 1D simulation tool, AVL BOOST, was used to model the system, and comparison study was carried out between the conventional and nozzle piston expanders. It was found the nozzle piston expander could increase output power from a minimum of 0.73kW up to a maximum of 4.75kW. The simulation study has shown that the concept of using nozzle to admit steam into the piston expander has potential to improve engine system level efficiency.