Turbocharger vs Supercharger

8:34 PM difference between , how it works , supercharge , Turbocharger 0 Comments

Though they appear to be similar in the terms of their functionality, they differ from each other in terms of the basic principle behind their working. They both help by pumping in more air/charge into the engine to increase the power output as well as the efficiency


supercharger

 The supercharger works by pumping in more amount of air/charge into the engine cylinder. The superchager is essentially a pump that is run from the power of the IC engine, which is conencted by a drive belt. The crankshaft has a ring gear arangement that is used to run the belt along the loop into the supercharger, which in turn, acts as a rotary action pump. On the inout side of the supercharger is the air for the deisel engine and charge(gasoline+air) for the gasoline engine. This gets pumped at higher pressure into the engine and helps to increase the amount of comnbustion that is taking place, thereby increasing the power output by about 15 to 25 %.

turbocharger

The turbocharger works by the same pumping action but the source of power is different. The turbocharger spins from the flow of the exhaust pipe. The exhaust gases flow at high pressure and temperature from the engine and this contains a substantial amount of energy which can be tapped to proper utilization. This energy gets converted in the form of rotation of the impeller which in turn drives the turbo charger. This can lead to very high RPM of around 150,000 in certain models and has much higher efficiency than the supercharger. The turbocharger may have efficiency between 20% to 60% but there are certian problems too.  One of the problems associated with the turbocharger is that it restricts the flow of the exhasut gases, which becomes especially important at lower engine speeds. There is a remedy that comes in the form of the tail gate,which is used to bypass the exhaust when the engine is running at lower RPM. The cutoff RPM can be anywhere around 1500-2000 RPM. There is generally a significant increase in the power output of the engine and in models not implemented properly, the drivers may complain of lag in response to the throttle.