Cost to benefit ratio of an exhaust heat recovery system on a long haul truck

Nearly 30 percent of the fuel energy in an internal combustion engine is lost as waste heat in the form of hot exhaust gases. Nowadays it seems clear that the heavy duty manufacturers will implement bottoming Rankine cycles to recover the exhaust heat on their long haul trucks in the 2020s as an answer to future stringent regulations and the still increasing customer pressure for reductions in operating costs. Though the potential of exhaust heat recovery is clear, the technology has to prove the business, durability and safety cases to be widely spread in the next decade. This paper focuses on the business case of such a technology.