BMW continues exhaust gas heat energy recovery research
BMW has played around with recovering heat energy from exhaust gas and turning it into usable energy before.
It involved using exhaust gas to heat up water to produce steam, which passes through an expansion unit that transfers kinetic energy to a crankshaft, which in turn helps power the engine. This was a concept called the BMW TurboSteamer, and was shown back in 2005.
BMW is now harvesting energy from exhaust gas to be turned into electricity instead of kinetic energy, thanks to new technology pioneered by NASA. The materials used by NASA in thermo-electric generation increases electricity generation to a maximum of 1kW, instead of previous limit of 0.2kW.
This electricity can be stored for later use the same way BMW uses electricity regained from its EfficientDynamics brake energy recovery.
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BMW TurboSteamer
June 9, 2008 @ 12:54 am
smart! can we use this to generate electricity while i park my car under the hot sun??
June 9, 2008 @ 1:14 am
damn, i’ve thought of this idea all this while… nice one.
June 9, 2008 @ 6:11 am
This method may be utilized in radiators and intercoolers to harvest bypass energy. This is cool!
June 9, 2008 @ 9:04 am
This is probably a derivative of a Peltier device.
June 9, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
Gotta be more years to come before we al can afford to have these sorta features.. :/
June 9, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
BMW is ahead of the game…
June 9, 2008 @ 9:12 pm
It will still be sometime before you can see cars on the road, if they make it on the road.
June 11, 2008 @ 6:40 pm
Good move towards greener world. But still the car itself contribute to emission.