Discussion:
Hydraulic energy recovery system

I'm a student from the KULeuven in Belgium and I'm doing some research on developing a hydraulic energy recovery system. I've already modelled in Matlab/Simulink (mathematic program) a hydro-pneumatic system that recovers braking energy. But now I want to model a system that recovers energy from lowering a load.
I'm using two one-way cilinders.
The pump must be driven by an ICE (internal combustion engine). The energy that is recovered doesn't have to be stored in a battery but in accumulators so I can use the energy for lifting a load.

I'm looking for a hydraulic scheme for this energy recovery system and maybe some formulas. Any help would be most welcome!!!
  • Posted 25 Feb 2010 22:48
  • By Toppe
  • joined 25 Feb'10 - 2 messages
  • Vlaams-Brabant, Belgium
Showing items 1 - 1 of 1 results.
The main issue you will have is that if the back pressure in the hoist circuit is too high the forks won't lower. And with no load on the forks it doesn't take a lot of backpressure to significantly hurt your lowering time, which lowers productivity. Somehow you need to measure lowering speed and control the load (energy recovery system) to maintain the allowed max lowering speed. And remember that cold temperatures will also negatively impact lowering speed.

This isn't too hard with a pump/motor set because if you know motor speed you know the pump speed, and you can estimate the mast speed. As far as an accumulator goes, I don't think you want to do that. The pressure in the accumulator will rise exponentially. You will need a fairly fast computer to keep the system working smoothly.

ISZ
  • Posted 2 Mar 2010 15:10
  • By icestationzebra
  • joined 1 Sep'08 - 12 messages
  • Wisconsin, United States

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