Steady State Testing of an Organic Rankine Cycle Designed for Exhaust Heat Recovery Applications in Truck Engines

The transport sector is presently accountable for 1/4 of total greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere, with road transportation depicting 17.8% of the total transport emissions contributing to global warming's growing threats caused by the continuous release of exhausting gases from internal combustion engines (ICEs). These exhaust threats call for improved sustainable ways of deploying fossil fuel in an environmentally friendly manner. Many sustainable solutions have been suggested recently with others already in the market; however, another promising sustainable solution is the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) application on-board automobiles, which is still developing stage with the prospect of entering the market soon. This paper presents the results from the thermal performance testing of an ORC system coupled to a commercial truck engine for exhaust heat recovery, which otherwise is exhausted to the environment causing pollution and other environmental threats. The test was performed to complement a study on the potential viability of installing an ORC based exhaust heat recovery (EHR) system on-board highway trucks for improving the truck's thermal performance without added fuel consumption. The testing carried out at 40% of rated load, and 1700rpm engine speed achieved 4.22kW, 3.67kW, and 5.28% for peak power output, net power output, and cycle thermal efficiency of the ORC model, respectively. These results imply that installing the ORC system on-board long-haul trucks for exhaust heat recovery has a promising future.