User:Dcharold/sandbox/Libertine FPE

Libertine FPE

Libertine FPE Ltd. Is a British-based engineering company focusing on creating free-piston engines and related software and tools.

It describes the end product for its technology as a ‘Smart Engine’, which it conceptualizes as an internal combustion engine using linear generators, real-time electronic piston motion control, adaptive control algorithms and offering advanced data logging, analytics and diagnostics functions for improved maintenance and demand response.

A Smart Engine using Libertine’s technology platform has the crankshaft replaced by software-controlled linear electrical machines that generate electrical power and also govern digital piston motion control to optimize the combustion process. The company asserts that this makes engines far more efficient, cleaner and more flexible, and can produce 30% more power from the same fuel input.

Smart Engines may utilize traditional fossil fuels and ‘alternative’ fuels such as bioethanol, methanol and syngas from waste gasification.

Libertine FPE is part of a wave of companies that regard the disruption in the automotive market caused by the introduction of electric vehicles as an opportunity to redefine the role of the combustion engine as an on-board electrical power generator. They can be considered as part of the cleantech movement.

As well as creating engines focused on the automotive market Libertine offers for license technologies for the distributed power generation market.

Operations and products

IntelliGEN 20-40kWe Smart Engine product development platform for OEMs targeting series hybrid vehicle and distributed power applications.

OpenFPE 1-20kWe turn-key Smart Engines and tools for combustion research activities.