Engineering news
A British engineering start-up that took its technology on a trade mission to the US earlier this year has secured a client in Malaysia and is exploring other export opportunities, the mechanical engineer who runs it has confirmed.
Sam Cockerill, founder of Libertine FPE, has developed and commercialised a free piston and linear generator technology with applications in power generation, heating and transport. Cockerill, a chartered mechanical engineer and MBA, said Libertine had benefited from participating in the Clean and Cool entrepreneurial mission in January, which introduced small British technology companies with “high growth potential” to American investors.
A free piston engine is a heat engine with pistons that move back and forth to extract work from a fluid, or to act as a pump. Unlike a conventional internal combustion engine, a free piston engine does not have connecting rods and a crankshaft to govern each piston’s movement and convert reciprocating action into rotary motion.
As a result, each piston is free to move along its axis under the action of linear forces, including those due to combustion pressure. An internal combustion engine generator based on this format has a combustion chamber at one or both ends of the free piston, and a linear electrical generator to capture power from the piston during its movement cycle.
Of the San Franciscan mission, Cockerill said: “We were able to talk to institutional and corporate investors. There were also some chats with advisors and other operators in the Bay Area, giving us insight into how investors and technology firms in California are looking to engage with people outside of the state, and then wider networking sessions in one-to-one meetings.
“I was able to meet some prospective technology partners, investors and advisors all in the course of the same week. We made the connections.”
Prior to founding Libertine, Cockerill was an independent management and technical consultant to the renewable energy industry and public sector. He formerly worked for Ensus UK, a bioethanol firm that was sold to Germany's CropEnergies in 2013. It manufactures approximately 1.2 million cubic metres of bioethanol a year from cereals and sugar beet. CropEnergies temporarily paused production of its English subsidiary, based in Wilton, Yarm, last month. The decision was made due to the “difficult situation” in the European bioethanol market, which the dramatic drop in oil prices in the last few months has exacerbated.
Bioethanol prices reached an all-time low of €417 per cubic metre in Rotterdam in January. CropEnergies said the devaluation of the euro compared to the British pound was an additional burden. “The drawn-out political process in the EU to also increase the percentage of renewable energies in the transport sector compared to today is not conductive either,” the company said in February.
Libertine took part in a pitch at the Clean Equity Monaco Forum earlier this month. Cockerill said it was important that the company took part in international research activities at combustion labs and in development work on high performance advanced combustion technologies such as HCCI, or homogeneous charge compression ignition. “The UK is a niche market and we want to lay the foundation for widespread subsequent deployment of our technology.
“We have got some British technology that has been really successful. Firms like Intelligent Energy and Ceres Power are trying to do what we are trying to with a similar model – through partnerships and reaching out to people.
“We need applications that can build value on top of the technology that is being created.” He said his engineering background in motorsport helped to establish Libertine's credibility as a business. “That gives assurances that we will hit the objectives for free-piston control that couldn't necessarily be achieved otherwise.”
One of the firm's first overseas clients is Malaysia's oil and gas giant Petronas, which has been developing free-piston technology over the last decade.
“They don't see our technology as a competitor but something that will allow them to take their free-piston combustion engine to the next level.”