Turbocharger and Supercharger- what's the difference ?

Both turbocharger and Supercharger are used to enchance engine power, by forced introduction methods.

However these two devices work differently in the way they take advantage of engine power to boost more power.

The original intentions of supercharging and turbocharging are basically the same. They both suck more air into the engine through the air compressor, supplemented by increasing the supply of fuel and improving the output power of the engine. The biggest difference between turbocharging and supercharging lies in the way the air compressor is driven. The turbocharger is driven by exhaust gas, while the supercharger is driven by the torque generated by the engine crankshaft.

Air compression is carried out by a belt driven by a crankshaft pulley for higher density gas and further higher power. The supercharger generally has a fixed transmission ratio with the engine speed, and one of the biggest benefits is that it can provide instant boost response under any working conditions, completely independent of exhaust temperature and pressure, and under any circumstances. Without any boost delay, the supercharged engine has excellent transient response to the throttle and excellent drivability of the vehicle.

The energy of the exhaust gas is used to drive the turbine of the turbocharger, and the impeller at the intake end is driven to compress the intake air, so that a higher intake manifold pressure and a larger flow of fresh air can be obtained to improve the output power and torque of the engine. At the same time, the engine will install an intercooler in the pipeline after the outlet of the pressure end of the turbocharger to reduce the temperature of the compressed air to further increase the air density, improve engine combustion, reduce emissions and fuel consumption.

Supercharger is the least common way of supercharging in our daily life. If you are facing a large-displacement engine, because supercharger requires the engine to have enough torque to drive the supercharger, it also requires the main output section of the engine to be low. At the low speed of 4500RPM, because the supercharger will become the load of the engine at high speed, the power increase brought by supercharging is not as good as the power consumed by the supercharger, so it is used in less applications like Jaguar, Land Rover etc.

Now everyone is more exposed to turbocharged engines, because turbocharged engines are mainly used for small-displacement engines, which also caters to the engine needs of family cars. Especially the fuel consumption problem, because the supercharger consumes the output power of the engine, and the exhaust gas turbocharging makes reasonable use of the exhaust gas energy of the engine. And it is also more than 10% lower than the overall fuel consumption of the supercharger.