A novel compression strategy for air hybrid engines

A novel compression strategy for air hybrid engines is proposed utilizing two storage tanks which increases the efficiency of regenerative braking of air hybrid vehicles significantly by increasing the stored air mass and, consequently, the storing pressure in the tank. The second law definition for efficiency is suggested and employed to evaluate the regenerative system capability in storing the kinetic energy of a decelerating vehicle. The maximum energy storing capacity of conventional and proposed compression methods are derived and the advantage of the double-tank system in increasing the energy storing capacity is shown. An experimental setup has also been designed and tested to evaluate the double-tank compression strategy in practice. The experimental results show at least 70% improvement in storing pressure and 125% improvement in energy storing capability in the regenerative braking process using the double-storage system.

► A novel compression strategy based on utilizing two tanks was proposed.
► The theoretical and experimental results showed the advantage of the proposed strategy.
► The experimental results show at least 70% improvement in storing pressure and 125% improvement using the double-storage system.
► The proposed compression algorithm can be also applied in any other applications, where higher pressure with higher air mass flow rate is demanded such as typical reciprocating compressors.