Onboard power systems based on hot water energy storage for green vehicles as an alternative to battery electric vehicles

Yiding Cao

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-76335-8

Onboard power systems based on hot water energy storage for green vehicles as an alternative to battery electric vehicles

Sci Rep. 2024 Nov 25;14(1):29216. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-76335-8.

Author

Yiding Cao¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33174, USA. caoy@fiu.edu.

PMID: 39587130
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-76335-8

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of onboard hot-water-storage-based power systems for green vehicles. The hot water at a moderately high temperature is stored onboard vehicles and its thermal energy is used to produce wheelwork through a heat engine to drive vehicles without combustion. The hot water's wheelwork storage density matches or exceeds that of battery packs of electric vehicles (EVs). When hot water is produced by solar energy, its overall solar utilization efficiency is more than 1.5 times higher than that of battery EVs with a 60% land-use reduction. The design and integration of hot-water storage modules for semi-trucks, delivery vans, and SUVs are demonstrated with detailed technical calculations. The results show that hot-water vehicles (HWV) can outperform EVs in terms of driving ranges. The HWV could be a truly renewable and clean vehicle and a direction to achieve sustainability with positive impacts on the earth and transportation industries.

Keywords: Enhanced Brayton cycle for clean heat engines; Green and clean vehicles; Hot water; Nature-based solution (NBS) for transportation; Onboard energy storage module.