Liquefied natural gas cold recovery for heavy-duty vehicles smart management

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is always more and more used as alternative fuel for heavy-duty vehicles because it is more environmentally friendly than traditional fossil fuels. LNG is stored in cryogenic vessels within the truck and must be vaporized before it can be used to supply the engine. Objective of this paper is to evaluate the thermodynamic performance of an innovative system aiming at recovering the cold thermal energy from the LNG vaporization. In general, the cold energy obtained can be used for different applications on-board: vehicle air-conditioning, refrigeration purposes or cooling of engine intake air. With respect to the latter, a thermodynamic analysis of the system proposed is illustrated under different operating conditions and the impact on the overall performance of the LNG fuelled engine of the truck is discussed.