Green Options » Rankine cycle http://greenoptions.com/tag/rankine-cycle Posts tagged 'Rankine cycle' Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:08:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Heat Recovery to Improve Highway Mileage http://gas2.org/2008/02/25/heat-recovery-to-improve-highway-mileage/ http://gas2.org/2008/02/25/heat-recovery-to-improve-highway-mileage/#comments Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:08:11 +0000 Philip Proefrock http://gas2.org/2008/02/25/heat-recovery-to-improve-highway-mileage/ Honda Rankine engineHybrid vehicles make great use of regenerative braking and the efficiencies of electric motors for lower speeds and stop-and-go driving. Some hybrids are so good that they have better MPG ratings in the city than they do on the highway. But out on the highway, a hybrid doesn’t fare any better than a vehicle with standard gas engine. Regenerative braking is the way hybrids recover energy during stop-and-go driving, but at highway speeds, there is nothing helping feed back energy into the system, and hybrids are at par with non-hybrids.

Honda has now come out with a demonstration vehicle (using a Japan-only Honda Stream hybrid) that recaptures waste heat from the gasoline engine and runs a small Rankine cycle generator from that to recharge the battery pack.

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