Gas recycling exhausts the possibilities

A team of UK engineers claims to have developed a simple device that could recover the energy lost through a vehicle’s exhaust pipe.

Researchers working on the Turbo-generator Integrated Gas Energy Recovery System (Tigers) project said their system could make engines run more efficiently while generating enough power to run all of a vehicle’s electrical systems. Almost a third of the power produced by a conventional engine is wasted in the form of exhaust gas.

The Tigers group, which is part of the government’s Foresight Vehicle initiative, includes researchers from automotive systems giant Visteon, Harrogate-based SR Drives and The University of Sheffield.

At the heart of the system is an extra waste pipe installed below the manifold, where the exhaust system joins the engine. A valve linked to the engine’s management control system allows some of the high-energy gas to be drawn into this pipe, where it drives a custom-designed generator using a specialist device called a switched reluctance drive (SRD).