Waste Heat Integrated Industrialised Trucks and Tractors Engine

Project Information

WHIITE

Grant agreement ID: 783959

DOI

10.3030/783959

Project closed

EC signature date 9 November 2017

Start date 1 October 2017

End date 30 September 2019

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 1 989 271,25

EU contribution

€ 1 392 489,00

Coordinated by

H2P SYSTEMS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - WHIITE (Waste Heat Integrated Industrialised Trucks and Tractors Engine)

Reporting period: 2018-10-01 to 2019-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In a combustion engine, 60% of the fuel energy is lost into heat mainly through exhaust gases. Such vehicles as heavy-duty trucks and tractors will still use combustion engine in the next 20 years. Therefore, the WHR technology with its efficient results is integrated in the 2020 “product plan” of major constructors (OEM) and suppliers (Tier1).
WHIITE is the most promising WHR technology because :
• It is a small additional engine designed with major constructors to be integrated easily in existing engine environment (trucks and tractors).
• It creates additional mechanical power without gas emission.
• It reduces by 8% to 10% the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
• It does not increase neither vehicle weight nor its number of components, as it replaces air compressor and EGR cooler.
• It is built with conventional material without electronics needs. Furthermore, WHIITE is maintenance free for 1.000.000 km. Cost price will allow a payback period shorter than one year to End Users (transport operators).
• Its principle is protected by worldwide delivered patents with a freedom to operate. An independent expert has validated the demonstration of the engine at the TRL6 level.

H2P SYSTEMS aims to finalize and bring to the market its unique WHR WHIITE engine (Waste Heat Integrated Industrialised Trucks & tractors Engine), which transforms exhaust gas heat directly into mechanical energy. The WHIITE engine should improve fuel savings by 8-10% and reduce CO2 emissions by the same amount (which corresponds to the reduction of ~55 tons of CO2 emissions per truck per year). Truck and tractors represent a potential market of 450.000 vehicles in Europe. Our ambition is to become the worldwide reference in WHR for heavy vehicles

In order to achieve this goal, we target the following industrial and technical objectives in this SME Instrument project:

• Improve the following engine characteristics:
o Achieve additional power on the truck: 7 kW in cruise mode (75% of the truck use) and 10 kW at full load (5% of use); this additional power is directly added to the main engine power, at similar speed;
o Reduce the WHIITE engine cost production in order to offer a 6-months Payback Period to the end users ;
o Increase the WHIITE engine reliability so as to cover truck lifespan.
• Conduct bench tests in order to validate the technology (TRL 7) for further industrialisation.

The conclusions of the action are the following:

• Substantial improvement of WHIITE engine performances - Final design and manufacturing of the final prototype have been validated ;
• Validation of the performances and relevance of the technology for different applications has been conducted and validated ;
• Industrialisation of the system in 2020 has been studied and its preparation is currently being conducted : a pilot line will be installed in 2020
• WHIITE technology will be on the market in 2020 (power generation systems) and in the forthcoming years in the transport sector (truck and tractor).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

DDuring the first 12 months of this project, we achieved the main following tasks :
• Development of specific high-performance dedicated test benches
• Improvement of pre-WHIITE engine prototype reliability and performance
• Guidelines for the final WHIITE engine design.

The work carried out made it possible to acquire knowledge on this new technology and to make significant theoretical and experimental progress, as for example :
• Dynamic sealing: thanks to the development of a unique test bench, we could characterize, study and improve our sealing prototype parts ;
• Advances in friction reduction, seal quality, increased temperature working conditions and endurance ;
• Air circulation: this subject has significantly progressed thanks to modeling and simulation work that has allowed us to better understand the pressure drop at the passage of gas and heat exchange. This progress was materialized by the development and prototyping of a new gas distribution concept ;
• Piston-cylinder sealing: a new solution has improved the reduction of torque drift with gas heating ;
• Air loop: we have developed our own test means to characterize our engines finely and in particular the performance of the exchangers and the heat losses between the engine and the exchanger. We are continuing our investigations and performance improvements on this subject, with ambitions to reach higher temperatures, further improve cycle efficiency, and to compact the air loop part.


During the second 12 months period of this project, we achieved the main following tasks :
• Substantial improvement of WHIITE engine prototype performances, now very close to ambitious objetcives that were targeted at the beginning of the project;
• Validation of final WHIITE engine prototype design;
• Validation of final WHIITE engine prototype manufacturing.

The work carried out made it possible to acquire knowledge on this new technology and to make significant theoretical, experimental, industrialisation and market access progress, as for example :
• Design to cost and preparation of the industrialisation phase of the system were also conducted and a pilot production line will be installed in 2020 ;
• WHIITE technology will be on the market in 2020 (power generation systems) and in the forthcoming years in the transport sector (truck and tractor).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The following progress and results were obtained :

• Bring the WHIITE technology, based on unique thermodynamic cycle, to an innovative TRL 7 system ;
• Develop demonstrators and conduct bench tests in order to bring WHIITE to industrial readiness and higher maturity for market introduction ;
• Introduce the WHIITE engine to manufacturing market (first on the power generation market, and then on the heavy-duty truck market, excellent opportunity for H2P SYSTEMS to introduce its beyond the state-of-the-art Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) technology ;
• Participate to help the European Union to achieve CO2 emissions reduction by offering a technology with immediate significant reduction of CO2 emissions and easy deployability.
• Furthermore, we have demonstrated the feasibility of bringing the WHIITE Engine technology on power generation systems and CSP (Concentrated Solar Plant) systems. This versatility offers additional perspectives for the dissemination of the WHIITE technology towards various markets.

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