Everything you need to know about superchargers and turbochargers

Super chargers


Superchargers are pressure boosting devices which supplies air at high pressure to the engine. It is driven by the engine itself & power is transmitted via a friction belt to the device.

The power is utilized by the device(compressor) to compress the air & then delivers the pressurized air to the engine via intake manifold. Various types of supercharger such as centrifugal type, root’s type  & vane type are available in the market.

Turbochargers


Turbochargers have the same function as supercharger except that they don’t draw power from the engine. Turbochargers get their power from exhaust gases. The engine produces huge amount of exhaust gases carrying enormous heat energy. This energy usually gets wasted since they are released directly to atmosphere.

Turbochargers utilize this energy by letting the exhaust gases pass through a turbine. The turbine produces work which drives a compressor. The compressor then compresses air & supplies it to the engine at high pressure.


Turbo vs Supercharger: pros and cons


Each method of forced induction has its pros and cons. While a supercharger provides immediate boost, fuel economy does suffer compared with a turbocharger that is inactive at low revs (turbo lag) or at idle. 

Compared with turbochargers, superchargers are easier to install and (generally) do not require an intercooler. This is because supercharges do not heat the compressed air as much as a turbo. Turbochargers can sometimes provide too much boost, which damages an engine. A waste gates removes excess boost which protects an engine.


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Battery, do you know how does it work?

Batteries are everywhere. The modern world is dependent on these portable sources of energy, which are found in everything from mobile devices to hearing aids to cars. 

But despite their prevalence in people's daily lives, batteries often go overlooked. Think about it: Do you really know how a battery works? Could you explain it to someone else?

What is Battery made of?

Batteries contain three basic parts: electrodes, an electrolyte and a separator. There are two electrodes in every battery. Both are made of conductive materials but serve different roles. One electrode is cathode which connects to the positive end of the battery and is where the electrical current leaves (or electrons enter) the battery during discharge, which is when the battery is being used to power something. The other electrode, known as the anode, connects to the negative end of the battery and is where the electrical current enters (or electrons leave) the battery during discharge.


Between these electrodes, as well as inside them, is the electrolyte. This is a liquid or gel-like substance that contains electrically charged particles, or ions. The ions combine with the materials that make up the electrodes, producing chemical reactions that allow a battery to generate an electric current.

The final part of the battery is separator which is straight forward. The separator's role is to keep the anode and the cathode separated from each other inside the battery. Without a separator, the two electrodes would come into contact, which would create a short circuit and prevent the battery from working properly.

How does a Battery work?

To envision how a battery works, picture yourself putting alkaline batteries, like double AAs, into a flashlight. When you put those batteries into the flashlight and then turn it on, what you're really doing is completing a circuit. The stored chemical energy in the battery converts to electrical energy, which travels out of the battery and into the base of the flashlight's bulb, causing it to light up. Then, the electric current re-enters the battery, but at the opposite end from where it came out originally.

All parts of the battery work together to make the flashlight light up. The electrodes in the battery contain atoms of certain conducting materials. For instance, in an alkaline battery, the anode is typically made of zinc, and manganese dioxide acts as the cathode. And the electrolyte between and inside those electrodes contains ions. When these ions meet up with the electrodes' atoms, certain electrochemical reactions take place between the ions and the electrodes' atoms.

The series of chemical reactions that occurs in the electrodes are collectively known as oxidation-reduction (redox) reactions. In a battery, the cathode is known as the oxidizing agent because it accepts electrons from the anode. The anode is known as the reducing agent, because it loses electrons.  

Ultimately, these reactions result in the flow of ions between the anode and the cathode, as well as the freeing of electrons from the atoms of the electrode.

These free electrons congregate inside the anode (the bottom, flat part of an alkaline battery). As a result, the two electrodes have different charges: The anode becomes negatively charged as electrons are released, and the cathode becomes positively charged as electrons (which are negatively charged) are consumed. This difference in charge causes the electrons to want to move toward the positively charged cathode. However, they don't have a way to get there inside the battery because the separator prevents them from doing so.

When you flick the switch on your flashlight, all that changes. The electrons now have a path to get to the cathode. But first, they must pass through the base of your flashlight's bulb. The circuit is completed when the electric current re-enters the battery through the top of the battery at the cathode.

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What is wireless charging and how does it work

If you've ever untangled a Gordian knot of wires and cords, you probably understand the appeal of wireless charging.

Until recently, however, there weren't alternatives to charging through bulky wires and cords. But as wireless charging becomes more advanced, it may be used to power a wide variety of things other than phones or watches, such as lamps or even electric buses, experts say.

How it works
Wireless charging as a concept has been around since inventor and physicist Nikola Tesla first concluded that you could transfer power between two objects via an electromagnetic field.

Essentially, wireless charging uses a loop of coiled wires around a bar magnet — which is known as an inductor. When an electric current passes through the coiled wire, it creates an electromagnetic field around the magnet, which can then be used to transfer a voltage, or charge, to something nearby.

Most wireless power stations nowadays use a mat with an inductor inside, although electric toothbrushes, for example, have long had wireless charging embedded in their bases. Because the strength of the electromagnetic field drops sharply with distance (as the square of the distance between the objects), a device must be fairly close to a charging station to get power.

Although the basic concept of wireless charging has been understood for more than 100 years ago, scientists hadn't figured out a way to efficiently transfer large amounts of power using this technique. The amount of electric charge transferred is proportional to the number of coils that can be looped around the tiny bar magnet, as well as the strength of the magnet. Until recently, wires and electronics couldn't be made small enough and cheap enough to make wireless charging feasible.

Improvements in wireless technology
"The cost to do it has been really reduced,". "To make it more efficient, you have to have very, very flat coils of wire," enabling many loops of wire to be coiled around the tiny bar magnet.

What's more, wireless power stations must charge only objects that are supposed to be charged, such as a phone. To ensure that the wireless charging station doesn't power an errant object, wireless power stations use tiny transmitters that communicate with small receivers in a device, such as a phone.

In essence, the receiver "talks" to the charging station. "If it says I'm an authorized Qi receiver, it's OK to send me some power. I'll let you know how much power I need, and as those needs change, I'll let you know. And when I'm done charging, I'll let you know so you can go back to sleep".

Future prospects
Existing systems are used primarily to charge smartphones or smartwatches.
But wireless power may soon extend to many more applications. For instance, electric buses in South Korea are being charged through a wireless platform, and IKEA is rolling out a new line of furniture, including lamps and tables, with built-in charging stations.
Other groups are integrating wireless charging stations into public locations so that people with so-called battery anxiety — that ever-present fear of running out of juice — can charge their devices on the go.

As technology improves, it may be possible to charge bigger and more power-hungry devices, such as blenders or even vacuum cleaners. And companies are already designing systems in which wireless charging platforms in hotel rooms will be able to not only charge phones, but also figure out when people are in their rooms, sync their TV to the last spot in a movie they were watching on the plane and sense whether the air conditioning should be cranked up,

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