An experimental study of a 3-kW Stirling engine

A 3 kW Stirling engine, NSO3T which is a two-piston type with a unique V-shape cylinder arrangement, was developed by Toshiba. By adopting the cylinder arrangement and a well-designed heat exchanger system, a 50% indicated efficiency was obtained. In this paper, the specifications and modifications of the 1984 year NS03T engine, which is the first NS03T engine with the higher efficiency and performance, are presented. The higher indicated efficiency of the NS03T engine is presented by using reliable experimental data and analyzed data by a mathematical model, SETMA. Also, the regenerator loss is analyzed with a proposed method, which is able to derive reasonable regenerator loss from engine operating data. The results show that the design of the heat exchanger is important for high efficiency engines.