The disturbing current situation regarding the world climate has initiated a major wave of urgent developments towards decreasing the overall impact of human activities on the living environment. A major role player in this development is the automobile industry that is inherently connected to pollution of various types, be it air, water or noise pollution. There have been drastic changes not only in the technologies employed in producing vehicles and components, but also in the construction and technologies built into modern automobiles to lessen the overall environmental impact of the industry. Noxious emissions have been decreased, overall efficiencies increased and vehicles are becoming more economical with each new generation. Stricter laws dictate that the level of acceptable vehicle emissions is to be decreased ever further and all manufacturers are developing various possibilities to achieve this. With the emergence of hybrid vehicle technology, there was also a sudden development of different electrical systems that were made viable by the higher onboard voltage systems employed in hybrid vehicles. One of these developments was the electrical air conditioning compressor for use in automobile applications. Although it is designed to operate with a higher voltage than the traditional 12V onboard vehicle systems, it is theoretically possible to incorporate it into a 12V system by making use of a DC-DC converter to step up the supply voltage of the electrical compressor sufficiently to allow for its successful operation. The question therefore arises whether it would be feasible and sensible to employ an electrical air conditioning system in conventional combustion engine vehicles from an overall fuel consumption and vehicle emissions point of view. A modelling approach was taken where an overall vehicle driving simulation was created to represent an average modern production vehicle. The simulation was then extended to include the options of incorporating models for both mechanically and electrically driven air conditioning systems. This provides insight into the influences of the air conditioning system on the vehicle’s overall fuel consumption and an opportunity to compare the influences from the two different systems. This study attempted to provide answers to some of the viability questions regarding the incorporation of electrically driven air conditioning systems into vehicles that use standard 12V onboard voltage systems. It was found that the electrical system has definite potential as a viable replacement option for the conventional system should it be combined with an appropriate alternator and equipped with an efficient control system.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9623 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Marais, Charel |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment and Information Technology |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MTech |
| Format | ix, 109 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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