Honda Tests Advanced Hybrid System

708 Views 5 Replies 5 Participants Last post by touringcamry, Feb 21, 2008

Sulu

Discussion Starter · Feb 19, 2008

This sounds really interesting. An internal combustion generation engine wastes a lot of energy as heat, so if that waste heat can be used (other than to heat the passenger compartment), that would be very efficient.

Hybrid engines work by combining ... normally a battery and an internal combustion engine. The battery is meant to recapture ... for instance the energy wasted during braking. Interestingly, Honda has found a new alternative source of energy in respect of this.

The Japanese automaker is currently involved in a research using a Rankine cycle co-generation unit, in which the system works by capturing the exhaust heat from the engine and converting it to electricity.

...

Honda managed to successfully defeat the uncertainties on this system, by fitting the said unit into a standard Honda Stream and testing it. The test unit generated three times more electricity than other common systems found in hybrid cars these days.

The full article is available at: http://www.worldcarfans.com/9080218.017/honda-tests-advanced-hybrid-system.

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touringcamry

· #2 · Feb 19, 2008

That's awesome! A typical gasoline engine is only able to utilize about 25% of the energy contained in gasoline. Most of the other energy is wasted as heat. I've been saying all along that capturing the heat from burning gasoline would be an excellent way to capture wasted energy.

I think a year or two ago, BMW came up with a way to capture heat from the exhaust for an auxiliary drive unit that added 15HP.

Co-gen electric plants running on natural gas operate with something like 90% efficiency because the turbine can capture energy from burning gas and then the heat is captured for other uses. Where I live, the captured heat is used to produce steam used for building heating and cooling.

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Tideland Prius

· #3 · Feb 19, 2008

Use the heat from the exhaust pipe as radiant heating?

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Qslim

· #4 · Feb 19, 2008

BMW began research on a similar system a couple of years ago, the only difference being that they used the recaptured energy to help drive the crankshaft instead of a generator.

http://www.autoblog.com/2005/12/09/bmw-turbosteamer-gets-hot-and-goes/

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100$ GUY

· #5 · Feb 20, 2008

Qslim said:
BMW began research on a similar system a couple of years ago, the only difference being that they used the recaptured energy to help drive the crankshaft instead of a generator.

http://www.autoblog.com/2005/12/09/bmw-turbosteamer-gets-hot-and-goes/

So honda´s achievement is better??

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touringcamry

· #6 · Feb 21, 2008

That article doesn't have any numbers, so it's hard to say.

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