Has anyone made a machine gun, utilising Petroleum/gasoline internal combustion, instead of gunpowder?
People have tried to make gunpowder powered piston engines, but I never heard of a gas powered gun. In principle it should work, but it doesn’t sound practical. For starters it would be bulky and heavy. You would basically have the equivalent of a motorcycle engine attached to the gun. You would need a cylinder, valve system, gas tank, injection system, electrical system, cooling system and starter. Gunpowder does burn faster than the fuel-air mixture in a gas cylinder. This means that the energy is released in less time, giving more power for the acceleration of the projectile. I don’t know how much difference there is, but I suspect it is not a big factor. The big difference is that in a machine gun most of the energy goes to the projectile with a small amount being needed to recharge the chamber. With a single cylinder gas engine, you have to accelerate the piston as well as the projectile, and you would use a large part of the energy just to compress the fuel for the next stroke. T
