Development of the performance of an alpha-type heat engine by using elbow-bend transposed-fluids heat exchanger as a heater and a cooler

In this work, elbow-bend heat exchangers were suggested to be used as a heater and a cooler in an alpha-type Stirling engine. Elbow-bend heat exchanger is a bank of tubes arranged in a quadrant either in line or staggered with different normal and parallel pitches. Eight of such heat exchangers having different dimensions were tested experimentally for steady flow (in a previous work by the same authors). The experimental results were correlated for heat transfer and pressure drop. In the present work, an alpha-Stirling engine with twin parallel cylinders on a common crankcase was suggested to use elbow-bend heat exchangers as a heater and a cooler. In the heater, the flue gases flow inside the tubes and the working gas fluctuates about the heater tubes. In the cooler, the coolant flows inside the cooler tubes and the gas flows about the cooler tubes. A computer program in the form of a spread sheet was prepared to solve numerically the engine cycle in the vision of Schmidt theory. Upon calculations, the most suitable stroke/bore ratio, phase angle and speed were found out for nitrogen as a working gas. In a comparison among the proposed engine and practical ones by the literature, it was found that; the proposed engine delivers about 13% more power per cc per ΔT than those by the literature at high thermal efficiency level.