Air conditioners in vehicles take power from the engine, which means less engine power for the vehicle. To overcome this, Dr K Syed Jafar of the Government College of Engineering, Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu, has invented a method of obtaining cooling for the vehicle from the exhaust pipe. The gases that come out of the exhaust pipe are about 200°C — why not make use of it?
The system designed by Jafar and his team comprises a tube containing 10 litres of deionised water, which has a boiling point of 90°C. When the vehicle starts running, the exhaust heat is utilised to change the deionised water into steam. The pressurised steam with enormous velocity is sent into the impulse turbine, and the steam velocity is used to rotate the shaft of the co-generator to about 250 rpm.
The co-generator produces 24 V, 4 amp DC power. The steam, after passing through the turbine, gets condensed in the steam cylinder and flows back into the copper tube through gravity.
The steam cylinder is fitted with a PRV (pressure reducing valve), which operates at 2 psi for system pressure protection. The 24 V, 4 amp DC power is provided to the six Peltier coolers connected in series and parallel and clamped to a frame, which is placed inside the cabin to cool it, based on the thermoelectric effect. Jafar has filed for a patent for this invention.