Turbocharger working principle; Turbocharger

Turbocharger is the word most widely used in automobile sector. Now days its is integral part of cars.

Now days turbochargers are used mainly on diesel engines, but now-days initiatives has been taken to use turbo charging of production petrol engines. Turbochargers are most helpful while using them at high altitudes as air is less dense at high altitudes and by using turbocharger we will enable to get more power.  

There are following advantages of turbochargers :-

1.   By using turbocharger engines will go faster.

2.   Engine performance can be improved

Turbocharger consists of pair of fans that connect waste exhaust power from the back of an engine to force more air into the facade, providing more "energy".

Earlier days there is lot of exhaust fumes coming out of vehicles which causes air pollution. This air pollution leads to lot of waste of energy. This waste energy consists of heat as well kinetic energy which get wasted in atmosphere. By using Turbocharger you can use this waste heat and generate more economy and more kinetic energy.

Car engines works on principle that it consists of cylinders where air enters in every cylinder which get mixed with fuel and fuel burns in presence if air which leads to pushing of pistons, shafts turning and gears which leads to spinning of car wheels. Now when piston comes back to its position then it brings waste air and fuel mixes with waste air and which goes out of vehicle as exhaust. Thus we see that fuel goes out along with exhaust as un-burnt. Power generated by engine is directly proportional to how fast fuel get burnt. So if there are more cylinders then more power will get generated as more fuel get burnt every time. Which will leads to faster movement of vehicle.

So there will two options to generate more power:-

1.   By increasing more cylinders

2.   By using turbocharger.

Out of these two method using turbocharger is cheaper and simpler technology. In sports cars there are 8-12 cylinders instead of 4 cylinders in family cars.

How does a turbocharger work?

Turbocharger works in similar principle to that of jet engines. In turbochargers exhaust gas is used to drive a turbine which spins an air compressor and air compressor drives extra air into the car cylinders, Which will ultimately leads to burning of more fuel each second. Which will results into more power.

Turbocharger consists of two fans also called as impellers or gas pumps which are two in number. These are fitted on same shaft so that these will spin together.

One Fan is called turbine and another is called as compressor.

Turbine is usually mounted on exhaust flow from cylinder when exhaust gases flows out of cylinders than this turbine blades starts rotating and so connected shaft also start rotating.

Compressor also mounted on same shaft that of turbine also starts rotating. It is mounted on intake of vehicle which results into giving more air to cylinders.

Now when air is compressed by compressor than air get heated up and heated air will be lesser dense and which leads to lesser help in fuel burning. Thus it would be effective if air coming from the compressor will be cooled before entering the cylinders so to do this heat exchanger is used to remove heat from air.

Advantages of using Turbocharger:-

(i)           These can used both for gasoline as well as diesel engines

(ii)          With turbocharger we will get more power output with same size of engine.

(iii)        Turbocharger will leads to better fuel economy as this will leads to savings of 8-10% of fuel.

(i)           Turbocharger will leads to burning of fuel in more oxygen which leads to clean and complete burning of fuel which leads to reduced air pollution.

(ii)          Reduced size of engine with same capacity of engine will leads to lesser fuel consumption.

Disadvantages of Turbochargers:-

(i)           But there is disadvantage with Turbocharger is that these will leads to worse performance of engines in small engines.

(ii)          Turbochargers leads to complexity of engine.Which will leads to increase maintenance cost.

(iii)         Turbocharging principle is getting the power output from same engine. So there will be more temperature developed in engines and high pressure on pistons. Which leads to failure of engine more frequent, which means life span of engine get reduced.

(iv)              It will require more skills to drive cars fitted with turbocharger, as turbochargers are powered through exhaust gases so this will leads to delay between accelerator and the turbo starts.