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Waste Heat Recovery is one of the major opportunities to increase the engine efficiency in internal combustion engines (ICE) for the transportation sector and to meet the emissions targets. ORC-based units are widely investigated, in particular for heavy duty vehicles and light commercial ones. However, when a typical operation of the ICE on a vehicle is considered, working temperature and exhaust flow rates are not always suitable for recovery, being characterized by low-grade enthalpy. Volumetric expanders are among the most suitable technological solutions for small scale ORC-based power units, but they can suffer of low efficiency in real operation. A way to improve its performances is represented by a supercharging technique, which involves a further intake port.

Among the different opportunities to save fuel and reduce CO2 emissions from internal combustion engines, great attention has been done on the waste heat recovery: the energy wasted is, in fact, almost two thirds of the energy input and even a partial recovery into mechanical energy is promising. Usually, thermal energy recovery has been referred to a direct heat recovery (furtherly expanding the gases expelled by the engine thanks to their high pressure and temperature) or an indirect one (using the thermal energy of the exhaust gases - or of any other thermal streams - as upper source of a conversion power unit, which favors a thermodynamic cycle of a suitable working organic fluid).

The use of reciprocating internal combustion engines (ICE) dominates the sector of the in-the-road transportation sector, both for light and heavy duties. CO2 reduction is the technological driver, considering the severe worldwide greenhouse commitments. In ICE more than one third of the fuel energy used is rejected to the environment as thermal waste through the exhaust gases. Therefore, a greater fuel economy could be achieved, recovering this energy and converting it into useful electric power on board. Financial benefits will be produced in terms of fuel cost which will rebound similar benefits in terms of CO2 emitted. For long hauling vehicles, which run for thousands of miles, frequently at fixed engine operating conditions, this recovery appears very worthy of attention. In this activity, an ORC-based power unit was designed, built and tested fed by a heavy duty diesel engine, so contributing to the huge efforts on going in that specific sector.

Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) is one of the most viable opportunities to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from internal combustion engines in the transportation sector. Hybrid thermal and electrical propulsion systems appear particularly interesting because of the presence of an electric battery that simplifies the management of the electrical energy produced by the recovery system. The different technologies proposed for WHR can be categorized into direct and indirect ones, if the working fluid operating inside the recovery system is the exhaust gas itself or a different one whose sequence of transformations follows a thermodynamic cycle. In this paper, a turbocharged diesel engine (F1C Iveco) equipped with a Variable Geometry Turbine (VGT) has been tested to assess the energy recoverable from the exhaust gases both for direct and indirect recovery.