EDLC Hybrid System for Engine Starting and Energy Recovery when Braking Vehicles

Abstract

In the current context of reducing pollution through the most economical use of energy in the field of transport, it is necessary to find solutions with high efficiency for the recovery and storage of energy produced by moving vehicles in congested traffic conditions. Motor vehicles equipped with the thermal engines that equip modern cars primarily use a lead-acid battery to start the engine. The battery must provide a current of several hundred Amps for starting. Such batteries require high energy capacities, and their construction uses large amounts of Pb, an extremely polluting material. Also, the use of classic batteries in the automotive industry, in addition to pollution, is not effective either in terms of cost/weight When braking, electric cars generate large currents whose energy cannot be fully accumulated in batteries manufactured on the basis of Pb due to the limiting electrochemical process through which the electric charge accumulates. The modern computers that equip new vehicles have powerful processors that can command and supervise many phenomena on the car. A first step in this direction was made by the introduction of the Start-Stop system, which stops the engine when the vehicle is not moving or goes into the braking stage. When the accelerator pedal is pressed, the engine must start forcefully and at a higher speed than when the engine is running at “idle”. In this case, the starter is operated with a voltage 50% higher than the nominal voltage of the accumulator battery and a current of hundreds of amperes. In this case, a special passive component is used, namely the supercapacitor. A second step in the direction of reducing pollution is the considerable reduction of the battery capacity of Pb batteries, so less polluting, but which can ensure good starting even after a long time. This can be done by connecting a supercapacitor in parallel with a low-capacity Pb-based battery and an electronic control and monitoring system.