Environmental Benefits
The current world price of oil compels industry to consider very seriously the efficiency with which it uses this most convenient indigenous source of energy. Further, the anxiety society now feels about pollution of the environment, on both a global scale and at the local level, demands consideration of the efficiency of energy generation. This applies for basic commercial and domestic usage and certainly for transportation. Clean Power Technologies Inc. is engaged in research and development to enhance by hybridisation 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 the processes under investigation is the recovery of energy, as far as is practicable and consistent with the laws of thermodynamics, 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. The key for the process, especially where local pollution has to be avoided, is the clean storage of energy. Currently this is done with the electric battery; however this type of engery storage has inherent disadvantages, with its large weight and high cost coupled with low power and energy potential, especially when compared with thermodynamic processes. The heart of the technology under development by Clean Power Technologies Inc. is using the Clean Energy Storage and Recovery (CESAR) process, in which otherwise wasted heat, is used to generate pressure in a saturated liquid. This heat is then recovered in substantial part 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 power plant driven from the storage source together with a combustion engine where this is permitted and with no further fuel consumption, by the auxiliary engine alone in regions that are statutorily required to be free of pollution.
