Application of Micro Gas Turbine in Range-Extended Electric Vehicles

The increasing number of passenger cars worldwide and the consequent increasing rate of global oil consumption have raised the attention on fuel prices and have caused serious problems to the environment. Nowadays, the demand for reducing fuel consumption and pollutant emissions has paved the way to the development of more efficient power generation systems for the transportation sector. The lower fuel burning and pollutant emissions of hybrid electric vehicles give a strong motivation and encourage further investigations in this field. This research aims to investigate novel configurations, which could achieve further performance benefits for vehicle powertrain. Automakers claim that the employment of a gas turbine operating as range extender in a series hybrid configuration is the most efficiency solution in the coming years. In particular, a Micro Gas Turbine (MGT) can be considered as an alternative to the internal combustion engine (ICE) as a range extender for electric vehicles. The MGT produces less raw exhaust gaseous emissions such as HC and CO and static applications compared to the ICE. In addition, the MGT weight is lower than an equivalent ICE and potentially can reduce the level of CO2 especially in a vehicle application. This study presents a parametric study of MGT applications for Range-Extended Electric Vehicle (REEV). The main objective is to examine the MGT performance to meet the requirements for a REEV that could become competitive, in terms of fuel consumption and pollutant emissions, to equivalent diesel or gasoline hybrid propulsion units or to conventional diesel vehicle.