Environmental Benefits
The price of oil and increased public concern about pollution of the environment, on both a global scale and at the local level, encourages everyone to seriously consider how efficiently they use this source of energy. This applies for basic commercial and domestic usage and certainly for transportation. At the present time, transportation of any type is almost wholly dependent upon internal combustion engines burning, usually a liquid, hydrocarbon fuel. Electric batteries offer an alternative but only where range and power demands are modest. Such fuel cells may offer long term prospects of substituting hydrogen for hydrocarbons as an energy source, but large costs and dramatic infrastructure changes will inevitably be required.
We believe, therefore, that there is little prospect of avoiding combustion engines burning a hydrocarbon fuel to power any practical form of transport. However, this comes with well-established disadvantages: local and global sources of atmospheric pollution resulting from the products of combustion. These effects are magnified by the inefficiency with which useful mechanical power is derived from the intrinsic energy in the fuel.
Our technology enhances the thermal efficiency and effectiveness of power generation for all forms of transport, from the light car, through the heavy truck to railway locomotives.
The key to our processes is the recovery of energy that is otherwise dissipated without conversion to useful work; examples are in the exhaust of all heat engines, and in the often critical cooling circuits of internal combustion engines. Where local pollution has to be avoided, the clean storage of energy is crucial. Currently this is done with the electric battery; however batteries have inherent disadvantages, with its large weight and high cost coupled with low power and energy potential, especially when compared with thermodynamic processes. Our Clean Energy Separation And Recovery (CESAR) process, uses otherwise wasted heat to generate pressure in a saturated liquid. This heat is then recovered as required by allowing vapour to form and expand through a suitable auxiliary engine. Using the recovered energy in this way avoids the disadvantages of the electric battery, including its requirement for charging by additional fuel consumption in the combustion engine, as well as the other disadvantages as above.
Potentially CESAR offers the prospect of providing 40% or better improvements in the thermal efficiency of internal combustion engines, with a corresponding one-third reduction in emissions. Coupling the process with the most modern principles of electronic computer control of engine speed and power will enable high efficiency operation of the auxiliary engine. The auxiliary steam engine will work alone in regions that are statutorily required to be free of pollution, and where permitted it can work together with a combustion engine with no further fuel consumption