A Feasibility Analysis of an Electric KERS for Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles 2019-24-0241

In this work the author evaluate the energetic and economic advantages connected to the implementation of an electric Kinetic Energy Recovery System (e-KERS) on an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV). The e-KERS proposed is based on the use of a supercapacitor (SC) as energy storage element, a brushless machine (BM) for the conversion of the vehicle kinetic energy into electric energy (and vice versa), and a power converter, properly designed to manage the power transfer between SC and BM. A widely diffused passenger car, endowed of a gasoline fuelled spark ignition engines, was selected for the evaluation of the advantage connected to the implementation of the e-KERS: the attainable energy saving, together with the related fuel economy, were evaluated on the basis of two standard urban driving cycles, the ECE-15 and the Artemis Urban, by means of simulation performed using MatLab Simulink employing a model properly developed by the authors. The low complexity of the system proposed, the moderate volume and weight of the components selected for the KERS assembly, together with their immediate availability on the market, make the solution presented ready for the introduction in current vehicle production. The fuel economy evaluated through simulations and the cost of the KERS components allowed to estimate the economic advantage of its implementation. The analysis performed by the author took into consideration several KERS sizes combining different supercapacitors and brushless machines, with the aim to determine the best configuration from both an energetic and an economic point of view. As a result, it was found that the proposed KERS could allow substantial energy savings, to which correspond important fuel economy improvement together with equal reduction of CO2 emissions.