Overview
The reduction of CO2 emissions is an ongoing concern for the automotive sector. Many technologies, such as electric hybridization, have been developed to improve the performance of internal combustion engines.
Although interesting, this solution remained focused on the urban use of the vehicle. On a highway there are few solutions to significantly reduce vehicle fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Previous works focused on optimizing the powertrain but very few have moved towards recovery of heat losses in the exhaust which however represent about 30% of the energy generated in the engine and directly lost.
The SAVER project aims to design and develop an innovative system of recovery of the thermal energy of the automobile’s combustion engines exhaust gases into mechanical energy.
The intended thermodynamic cycle was particularly innovative since it is composed of a high performance exchanger associated with a hot air machine where compression and expansion of air are performed in a same chamber. SAVER therefore had high capacity for integration on the vehicle due to its small size and reduction performance of relevant emissions.