In recent years, a significant amount of attention in the automotive industry has been paid to the concept of vehicle electrification. This is for good reason, as it gives the industry the opportunity to address such large scale issues as rising fuel costs, emissions regulations, and uncertainty surrounding long term fossil fuel supply. While there has been progress made in this area and there will continue to be investment in it, electrification is a longer term strategy that will take time to become the dominate technology. In the meantime, it is important to take steps to improve the efficiency of vehicles that use the most common form of propulsion currently in service: the internal combustion engine (ICE).

ICEs have been the standard for use in automobiles for over one hundred years and over that engine manufacturers have continually improved their efficiency. However at this point in time, even the most advanced engines are still only approximately 40% efficient. This leaves 60% of the energy from the fossil fuel lost through heat, friction, and exhaust. This has given OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers the opportunity to look at technologies to improve the overall efficiency of the vehicle by capturing and reusing some of that energy.

One area of investigation is the capture of energy from the exhaust gas, which has led to several different technologies. In this white paper, several of these technologies will briefly be described with a focus on one of the most promising technologies, Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC), and how it can be designed using 1D thermo-fluid system simulation.