Any engineer will tell you that a huge amount of heat is rejected by the engine from the exhaust pipe. In fact, for cars, trucks and buses there’s more energy in the heat rejected from the exhaust than there is in the power transmitted from the engine to the wheels. Currently, all this heat energy goes to waste, as engineers view it as ‘low grade’. Until now there has been no effective system to recover this energy.
Epicam Ltd have developed the Dexpressor, a device set to supersede the turbocharger. Turbochargers work by pumping air into the engine. A turbine then recovers pressure energy from the exhaust to drive the pump, thereby increasing the efficiency of the engine.The Dexpressor works similarly, only it uses a different type of pump which uses a rotary displacement system,working according to a similar principle as a bicycle pump.
The rotary system uses an entirely novel method which means that it can harnesses up to 50% of the heat energy in the engine’s exhaust gas. The latest Dexpressor can recover a further 30% of the fuel energy which is added to the power output of the engine. If an engine was ‘downsized’ to compensate for the supplementary power unlocked, the total fuel savings could exceed 50%.