How Does Turbo Charger works?


  1. Cool air enters the engine's air intake and heads toward the compressor.
  2. The compressor fan helps to suck air in.
  3. The compressor squeezes and heats up the incoming air and blows it out again.
  4. Hot, compressed air from the compressor passes through the heat exchanger, which cools it down.
  5. Cooled, compressed air enters the cylinder's air intake. The extra oxygen helps to burn fuel in the cylinder at a faster rate.
  6. Since the cylinder burns more fuel, it produces energy more quickly and can send more power to the wheels via the piston, shafts, and gears
  7. Waste gas from the cylinder exits through the exhaust outlet.
  8. The hot exhaust gases blowing past the turbine fan make it rotate at high speed.
  9. The spinning turbine is mounted on the same shaft as the compressor (shown here as a pale orange line). So, as the turbine spins, the compressor spins too.
  10. The exhaust gas leaves the car, wasting less energy than it would otherwise.

How does turbocharging work in practice?
Shafts and impellers from a NASA Oil-Free Turbocharger  No automatic alt text available.
A turbocharger is effectively two little air fans (also called impellers or gas pumps) sitting on the same metal shaft so that both spin around together. One of these fans, called the turbine, sits in the exhaust stream from the cylinders. As the cylinders blow hot gas past the fan blades, they rotate and the shaft they're connected to (technically called the center hub rotating assembly or CHRA) rotates as well. The second fan is called the compressor and, since it's sitting on the same shaft as the turbine, it spins too. It's mounted inside the car's air intake so, as it spins, it draws air into the car and forces it into the cylinders.
Now there's a slight problem here. If you compress a gas, you make it hotter (that's why a bicycle pump warms up when you start inflating your tires). Hotter air is less dense (that's why warm air rises over radiators) and less effective at helping fuel to burn, so it would be much better if the air coming from the compressor were cooled before it entered the cylinders. To cool it down, the output from the compressor passes over a heat exchanger that removes the extra heat and channels it elsewhere.