Methodology to design a bottoming Rankine cycle, as a waste energy recovering system in vehicles. Study in a HDD engine

This article describes a methodology for the optimization of a bottoming cycle as a waste heat recovering system in vehicles. The methodology is applied to two particular cases in order to evaluate the preliminary energetic and technical feasibility of the implementation of a bottoming cycle in a heavy duty diesel (HDD) engine considering two different criteria. Initially, a study of the different waste heat sources of the engine is described. In this study, the power and exergy of each heat source is quantified, in order to evaluate which sources are suitable to be used in the bottoming cycle. The optimum working fluids to run the cycles are selected (water and R245fa). Then, the ideal Rankine cycle is optimized for the two different working fluids and different sets of heat sources (all the available heat sources and the sources with high exergy respectively) throughout the engine operating range, reaching a maximum improvement of 15% of the fuel consumption of the engine. Later, a study of the minimum temperature difference between the hot and cold flow of the heat exchangers is described. The improvements in fuel consumption and the size of the installed heat exchanger are related to this temperature difference. Finally, the non-ideal behavior of the machines (pump and expander) is analyzed, obtaining a maximum improvement of 10% in brake specific fuel consumption (bsfc). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.