| The Linear Combustion Engine |
| Written by Gavin D.J. Harper | ||
| Friday, 16 March 2007 | ||
Hybrid electric vehicles use rotary internal combustion engines to
generate electricity. But what if you took the generator, and
'unrolled' it into a line, did away with all that crankshaft and
flywheel nastiness, and replaced the lot with a straight bit of tube
with a combustion chamber at each end?
That is the idea of researchers at the Czech Technical University who are developing a linear combustion engine, with two opposing pistons at either end of a cylinder. The design of engine promises greater efficiency than rotary combustion engines paired with generators, however, this efficiency requires sophisticated control electronics to keep the system in check. Because the compression ration of the system can be variable - controlled by electronics - not fixed as in a rotary engine, there is the possibility to design vehicles that will run on a wide variety of fuels. Check out the Linear Combustion Engine Project here.
Comments
(6)
A Two-Stroke?
written by Mike , March 17, 2007
The picture in this article is of a 2-stroke (or also known as a 2-cycle engine). This is an inherently polluting engine--with a lot of unburned and partitially burned combustion byproducts.
Can work as a 4-stroke
written by kballs , March 20, 2007
They state on their web page that you can link 4 pistons together onto the same linear motor shaft to get a 4-stroke cycle (since there would always be a combustion stroke going to power the exhaust and compression strokes in the other pistons)...
...
written by Terry Sisson , March 21, 2007
The linear ICE is not new. The Bourke engine (1930s) design is like your drawing. Since then, others have modified it with coils and moving magnets in the center to simultaneously be a generator.
2 stroke engine
written by nathan , June 16, 2007
although these people are saying it is not green because waste fuel escapes through the exuast port
,it has a injector that only functions when both ports are closed,and as it produces more power than a 4 stroke for its weight,it is more efficent than a 4 stroke version
inventor
written by fred roberts , February 27, 2008
i made one of these engines using my own design in 1999 and hoped it could be built lagre enough to power subdivisions.....the hardest part turned out to be cycles per second at varying speeds and loads
...
written by Vincent Beall , October 26, 2008
In 2006 the idea for the engine occured to me. I tried to contact someone at my fraternity to communicate the idea.
I am just today search the net and an glad to find that the engine is being researched. Without knowing this I made a video about it that I uploaded yesterday. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3408858699311763289&hl=en | ||
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