Research Projects

Fossil fuels have been crucial for human development since the industrial revolution, but their uncontrolled use is becoming unsustainable. The transition to hydrogen, the cleanest fuel available, is necessary for energy conversion systems like Compression Ignition (CI) engines. A waste heat recovery system (WHRs) is proposed to generate electrical energy from waste heat in CI engines, which can be used for onboard sustainable hydrogen production using a proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser. The generated hydrogen can be co-fired with traditional fuel in the CI engine, reducing emissions and meeting evolving emission standards. A compact TEG is proposed to efficiently use waste heat from CI engines and generate hydrogen from water electrolysis in real time. The engine's performance and emission results will be reported and analyzed, and future comparisons of experimental and computational results will be made to achieve optimized engine performance. This concept aims to deliver a novel hybrid vehicle with a patentable strap-on module, meeting evolving emission standards for both on-road and off-road CI engines.