LAir Dearman Engine for Power and Cooling in Confined Spaces

The global demand for power and cooling is ever increasing leading to increased fossil fuel consumption and

CO2 emissions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world’s demand for electricity will

increase by more than 70% by 2040 compared to the levels in 2015. Also, it is predicted that the energy

demand for space cooling will overtake space heating by 2060 and will exceed it by 60% by 2100 to reach

10,000TWh. The project will deliver a cost-effective zero emission system for power and cooling in confined

spaces, by adapting the cutting-edge Dearman Engine (DE), a rankine-cycle expander currently powered by

liquid nitrogen (LN2) to utilise liquid air. The use of LAir instead of LN2 provides very attractive proposition for

Dearman given its availability, simpler production process but most importantly its safety features. The

University of Birmingham in collaboration with Dearman will develop a LAir driven Dearman engine and

correlate its performance with LAir composition and properties from storage to exhaust.