Enhancing Cooling System of a Combustion Engine by Integrating with a Stirling Cycle

For this article, experimental work was conducted to integrate a Stirling cycle unit onto a vehicle radiator for enhancing the cooling system of a car engine. The Stirling cycle was integrated with the car engine to act as a pressure relief valve for the radiator. The performance of the radiator was improved by increasing the rate of heat transfer from the radiator and the Stirling cycle unit. Experimental results showed that using the Stirling cycle had improved the heat transfer from the radiator by removing heat from the water circulated in the engine, which caused a reduction of temperature up to 15°C in the coolant inlet temperature entering the combustion engine. This reduction in the coolant temperature was also dependent on the coolant mass flow rate. The coolant inlet temperature and pressure of the combustion engine are compared with those obtained with and without using the Stirling cycle.