Experimental Investigation of Energy Harvesting at Outlet of IC Engine using Fire Tube Boiler

Abstract

Energy plays a vital role in modern era. Many studies have been done to generate energy, to make ways to harvest energies and to make devices more efficient to energy as possible. IC engines are used widely in the world in many applications like vehicles, generators, aircrafts, etc. The efficiency of engine providing useful power ranges 20%-40% and a huge amount is wasted through exhaust gases. This work has been done to harvest energy through these gases. For this purpose, we fabricated a fire tube boiler using copper coil to transfer heat from exhaust gases to the water. A part of waste exhaust heat was absorbed by water and steam was generated using this boiler. It took 42 minutes for 300 ml of water to absorb heat from exhaust gases and raise its temperature from 25 oC to 100 oC and convert itself into steam. Using the amount of heat absorbed by water, it was observed that about 0.46%-2.31% of heat was recovered and mechanical system ought to be upto 70%, upto 1.617% of efficiency may be improved by using fire tube boiler to harvest energy.