Pneumatic drives have been widely used alongside with
electrical machines. They have many distinct advantages
compared to electrical drives, such as simple in structure,
safe in hazard operating conditions and low-cost in
manufacturing. Its major weakness is low energy efficiency
and it is reported that only less than 30% efficiency is
achieved in most cases [1, 2]. With the expansion of the
usage of compressed air and the rapid development of
multi-scale Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), the
attention to pneumatic drives increases in recent years, due
to searching for efficient energy conversion devices to
convert compressed air energy to mechanical energy and in
turn electrical energy.
The scroll expander has gained big attention recently as it
has a higher ability of energy conversion than traditional
pneumatic drives, such as pneumatic cylinders and vanetype
air motors [3, 4]. It has been successfully applied to
build hybrid compressed air Uninterrupted Power Supply
(UPS) and Micro Combined Heat & Power (Micro CHP)
systems, in which scroll expanders are used to drive
electrical generators for electricity generation [5]. In
addition, the researchers have investigated the possibility
and the feasibility of using the scroll expander for
recovering the exhaust energy via the different systems,
such as a combination of a scroll expander and a
compressor for recycling work in a fuel cell system [6], the
exhaust compressed air energy recycling from traditional
pneumatic actuating systems and the post-combustion gas
energy reuse from vehicles [7, 8].
From the study at the University of Warwick, it is noticed
that the energy efficiency of scroll expanders drops with the
compressed air supply pressure decreases in the relatively
low supply air pressure situations, which will definitely
affect the expander operation and performance especially in
exhaust energy recycling applications. Through the initial
study at Warwick, it is found that the main reasons resulting
to such phenomenon are the friction from the movement of
scroll mechanisms and the air leakage between different
pneumatic scroll expander chambers. To solve this issue,
one method is to modify/redesign the scroll expander which
can provide the driving force not only from compressed air
energy when the low compressed air supply pressure is in
use. The method can overcome or reduce the negative effect
of scroll expanders from the air leakage and the friction.
This paper presents an innovative permanent magnetic
scroll expander which has potential to improve the
performance and the energy efficiency of scroll expanders,
especially for the applications in low compressed air supply
pressure situations. The paper starts from the study of the
scroll geometry and the thermodynamic process of standard
scroll expanders. The methodology to determine and to
install the magnetic materials into scrolls for generating the
extra useful force is then described. The magnetic field
between magnetized scrolls and the resultant driving torque
to the expander are analysed. The simulated result is
discussed at the end.