Go Green With Automobile Exhaust Recycling
Now that summer is upon us, many people are turning their thoughts toward planning their vacations. Unfortunately, with today’s gas prices being what they are, and the overall cost of operating and maintaining a motor vehicle being so high, fewer and fewer individuals and families are travelling to their getaway destinations. Also, it’s difficult for any ecologically conscious individual to drive a vehicle that spews waste chemicals into the air without some serious guilty feelings. Instead, more people are choosing to stay close to home, wasting their vacation sitting at home. But things won’t be this way for long.
Research engineers at Oregon State University have been working to develop a new technology that will capture and reuse an automobiles’ exhaust, according to a recent publication of the prototype in the Applied Thermal Engineering Journal.
This revolutionary technology will eventually have a wide range of industrial applications, but is currently being concentrated on the reuse of car exhaust to power electrical systems in the car, as well as provide cooling to the engine. Once this technology is perfected, it will potentially reduce the cost of owning and maintaining a car.
In article about the prototype published in ScienceDaily, Hailei Wang, a research associate at Oregon State’s School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, stated that more than half of the waste heat that is created during industrial processes is not used, and went on to say that that the average automobile’s internal combustion engine only successfully converts its own waste heat at a ratio of twenty five to forty percent. Wang also stated his belief that “this could become a very important new energy source and way to improve energy efficiency.”
The prototype system being developed by OSU has two distinct advantages over similar products that were developed in the past. Firstly, the OSU model is far more portable than earlier attempts at utilizing this technology. Secondly, the OSU model is able to produce electricity through a thermally activated cooling system, with current tests showing 80% of every waste heat kilowatt being converted into one kilowatt of engine cooling power. In addition, the system is able to produce electricity at a conversion efficiency ratio of fifteen to twenty percent.
What does this mean for the average consumer? Quite a lot, in fact! Once this new technology is in place, driving a car will become far less expensive. Fuel efficiency will be exponentially greater. And with most of the waste exhaust being recycled back into the vehicle to power other systems, your carbon footprint will suddenly become a whole lot smaller. So enjoy your summer, secure in the knowledge that soon, your family car will be helping to save you money, and save the planet!
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