All forms of traditional power plant used in driving vehicles or producing electrical power have low efficiency and generate more waste heat than power. On average, less than 20% of the energy in the fuel is converted to driving the wheels. In large scale power production for national grids, on average only 33% of the energy in the fuel is converted to usable electrical power. Most of the energy in the fuel is rejected as waste heat, principally in the exhaust.
Bowman is in the business of recovering useful energy from waste heat in order to build more fuel efficient power plants which improves payback and reduces emissions.
The Turbogenerator technology is designed to extract power from the exhaust of a traditional reciprocating engine. The exhaust exits at high temperature and pressure and typically carries 35% of the energy in the fuel out to the atmosphere. The Turbogenerator acts as a "bottoming cycle" for the engine in a similar way to that of a steam generator on Combined Cycle Gas Turbine plant (CCGT).
Power is increased by 20% above that of a conventional turbocharged engine. Fuel efficiency increases by 10%. Emissions correspondingly drop by 10%. The electrical power generated can be used to power electrical loads or to drive the engine shaft through a motor/generator, a process known as electrical turbocompounding. It represents a new way to increase product performance and expand the market for reciprocating engines, particularly where loads are changing to being electrically driven. (This is an increasing trend in cars, trucks, tractors, buses, etc., for both services and propulsion).
These Bowman high efficiency, cost effective inverters are also available integrated into Power Conversion units in the range of 50 kW to 130 kW for Transformer or Transformerless Utility Grid connection, or Micro Grid connection of Photo Voltaic Arrays, Fuel Cell, Wind Turbine Generators and High Speed Generators
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