Design of an External Combustion Engine and its Application in a Free Piston Compressor

The design of a free piston compressor and an analysis on integrating an external combustion engine into the compressor design are presented in this article. A free piston compressor is a device which converts chemical energy to work on a volume of air through the kinetic energy of an inertia driven piston, which is not rigidly attached to a ground. An external combustion engine serves as in intermediate chamber which transfers combustion gases to a device to perform some work. The following discusses the design and experiments on an external combustion engine, with a focus on eliminating an injection holding force on a free piston compressor’s elastomeric membranes. The efficiency of the external combustion engine to transfer energy without significant losses due to heat, dead volume, air/fuel mixtures, and actuated valve speed are also presented