The internal combustion engine driving your car is a pretty inefficient method of converting energy into motion. Friction from air resistance and motion along with heat dissipated from burning fuel all take your money in exchange for nothing. That car heater sure feels great in January, but most of the time that engine heat is lost to the atmosphere while we all do our part heating the outdoors.

Loughborough University and the University of Sussex, both in the UK, has concluded that using waste heat from light-duty vehicle engines in a steam power cycle could deliver fuel economy advantages of between 6.3% and 31.7% greencarcongress.com

The idea of pushing energy into water and creating steam is nothing new. Railroads built this nation with the steam engine, however paying a premium for energy has reawakened this old trick.

Clean Power Technologies claims to have successfully achieved a 40% reduction in vehicle fuel consumption.

Other uses for exhaust energy recovery is truck refrigeration. Traditionally, a small combustion engine uses fuel to cool the trailer during transport. A steam hybrid system would take wasted heat from exhaust gas and created steam that would power refrigeration.

Abdul Mitha, CEO, and Mike Burns, CTO, of CPT demonstrated a steam engine running on the free energy recovered from the exhaust of a Caterpillar truck engine and explained the 80% fuel savings achievable in refrigerated trailer applications. tradingmarkets.com