Stirling Engines

[Anonymous No.10828014]

Why aren't commercially available Stirling engines a thing yet?
https://vimeo.com/349210053

[Anonymous No.10828022]

>>10828014
where's the webm? why link to another site when you could have done a little more legwork and posted a video here? I'm not clicking that link.

[Anonymous No.10828034]

>>10828022
it's a NASA video about a trial using stirling engines for a truck
It's a 7 minute video.
I tried finding it on youtube but apparently they purged Jaff Quitney's entire account of restored publicly available archive footage in march.
what's wrong with vimeo?

[Anonymous No.10828047]

>>10828034
*Jeff

[Anonymous No.10828058]

Can I put one of these in my car and drive it on the road?

how the hell would it pass an emissions test?

[Anonymous No.10828074]

https://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/08/blast-from-the-past-nasas-stirling-powered-amc-spirit/

https://www.stirlingengine.com/store/

It's commercially available and works in pretty much any old car but the problem is that they take several mimutes to start up compared to seconds for a conventional engine, so it never became popular

[Anonymous No.10828080]

>>10828074
Can't we use battery starters now?
run it off the batteries for a couple minutes until the stirling engine fully fires up?

[Anonymous No.10828088]

>>10828080
Probably, there are many ways to make stirling engines work well for auto use but we probably won't ever see them because of how efficient and developed conventional engine technology is

[Anonymous No.10828093]

>>10828074
>the problem is that they take several mimutes to start up

see https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/stirling-hybrid-engine/
>Man builds 100mpg engine using 200-year-old technology

Use Stirling to charge batteries only. This guy /diy/ed his own version that's over 100mpg. Imagine what the MPG would be if a proper engineer could built one.

[xxXSuiseisekiXxx No.10828107]

We thought it were possible in the pacific islands.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SGE7f38FKGUXpMgICwbdlTlIIJcPO_sk82pI_Ktrzcw/edit?usp=sharing
But we backed down after seeing how much money per-capita the Tuvaluan have. And still in poverty.

[Anonymous No.10828136]

>>10828088
Most gasoline internal combustion engines run in the 20-ish range in terms of thermal efficiency, with a few experimental or extremely high grade systems getting into the mid or high 30's. The demonstrator Stirling engine in this video starts out at 40%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqIapDKtvzc
Used in a different configuration they can be great refrigerators, cold and hot gas engines, and heat pumps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFfMruoRMGo&t=376s

[Anonymous No.10828206]

Would a stiring engine be more efficient than a closed loop steam turbine? They look like the same thing in essence

[Anonymous No.10828236]

>>10828206
steam turbine creates power from the difference in pressure. You need both high and low pressure. The high pressure is created from steam, low pressure is normal atmospheric pressure

Stirling creates power from difference in temperature. High temp is created from burning or concentrating sunlight. Low temp is normal air temp, though you can also use water cooling or ice if you're in antartica and have access to unlimited ice.

Is there any reason you can't combine the two systems and double the efficiency?

[Anonymous No.10828237]

>>10828206
They are not the same. A Stirling engine can be run in reverse. So while it can use a differential in heat to create mechanical motion it can also take mechanical motion to create a heat differential. This means you can use it as a part of a fridge if you want.

[Anonymous No.10829414]

>>10828093
So that article is from 3 years ago - any more recent news? Did anyone do some independent verification of his claim MPG figures? He said he had an F150 running at 58 mpg; you would think big auto makers would be all over that tech, since it would make hitting CAFE goals for the larger, more profitable vehicles so much easier. Automakers have been willing to do large changes like aluminum bodies on the F 150 or smaller turbocharged engines, to eek out a handfull more miles per gallon. Being able to double to fuel economy would certainly be something they would entertain.

[Anonymous No.10829424]

why couldn't someone use a Stirling engine in their home for power generation? combine power + heat production in 1 single unit

[Anonymous No.10829430]

>>10829414
>any more recent news?
Nope vaporware just like everything built by one man in a garage.

[Anonymous No.10829459]

>>10829430
apple computers was built by 1 man in a garage

all the best things came out of some guys garage

[Anonymous No.10829533]

>>10829459

Some pretty interesting stuff comes out of yo mama's bedside drawers too

[Anonymous No.10829614]

>>10829459
Steve was a genius, but seriously fuck Steve

[Anonymous No.10829776]

What's stopping you putting one of these in a Cessna?

[Anonymous No.10830494]

>>10828074
>is that they take several mimutes to start up compared to seconds for a conventional engine, so it never became popular


>https://thescipub.com/pdf/10.3844/ajeassp.2018.1258.1292
>The start time of the NASA vehicle was 30 seconds, while the Ford pilot car using an electric preheater in the hot air area managed to start in just a few seconds.
>Many believe that hybrid drive would eliminate these shortcomings,

This seems like an underdeveloped technology. The kind of thing being overlooked that a small company or even person could jump on and do something with. This is kinda how VR tech took off with Lucky Palmer. All the major corporations ignore it because the technology doesn't exist to make it feasible. Then technology changes and it does become feasible and some random guy builds one and becomes famous. In Lucky's case the tech needed for VR was cellphone screens. For the case of the Stirling automobile it's hybrid drive technology.

[Anonymous No.10830522]

My thermodynamics professor warned that Stirling engines attract cranks for some reason, as far as I know some submarines do use them for silent drive however.
>>10828206
steam turbines are arguably the most efficient practical engines, with especially high efficiencies if you can use the waste heat for warmth

[Anonymous No.10830526]

>>10828236
a closed loop steam turbine also creates power from a temperature difference. Dumbass.
>>10830494
They aren't significantly more efficient than other engines. Shockwave engines could enable vehicles to use 60% of their fuel for propulsion though. The real red pill is to not use a heat engine at all and directly use the chemical energy in the fuel with a fuel cell.

[Anonymous No.10831123]

>>10830522
youtube has them in the same brackets as those magnet toys and perpetual motion machines, I think it's the whole novel idea of a heat engine that attracts them because it sounds sophisticated and you can put in on your tea mug

[Anonymous No.10831270]

>>10828014
>Why aren't commercially available Stirling engines a thing yet?
Thermoelectric generators are all solid state devices that do not require any fluids for fuel or cooling, making them non-orientation dependent allowing for use in zero-gravity or deep sea applications.[6] The solid state design is synergistic with existing production methods and allows for operation in severe environments. Thermoelectric generators have no moving parts which produces a more reliable device that does not require maintenance for long periods. The durability and environmental stability have made thermoelectrics a favorite for NASA's deep space explorers among other applications.[7] One of the key advantages of thermoelectric generators outside of such specialized applications is that they can potentially be integrated into existing technologies to boost efficiency and reduce environmental impact by producing usable power from waste heat.[8]
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator

Pretty good points!

[Anonymous No.10831472]

Isn't the point just that its hard to manufacture a system where it works consistently? I mean yeah the idea is nice, but you need a larger temperature difference.

[Anonymous No.10831858]

>>10831472
>you need a larger temperature difference.
nasa tested their truck in many varied environments. Hot, cold, humid, dry, salty/corosive air. Even did long distance treks cross country.

[Anonymous No.10832938]

>>10828058
If you power the Stirling engine with the waste heat from the exhaust and the cooling water there would be no added emissions, to the contrary. About 2/3 of the chemical energy in fuel is lost as heat. If you can recover 5 percent of that you increase available power by 10 - 15 percent.

[Anonymous No.10833102]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_thermoelectric_energy_converter

[Anonymous No.10833106]

>>10833102
Bcan you run an engine off one?

[Anonymous No.10833110]

>>10828034
Vimeo is like the people's youtube, youtube is like the totalitarian's youtube.

[Anonymous No.10833139]

>>10833110
youtube has become completely partisan censored and politicised
silicon valley has become a toxic bed of group think

[Anonymous No.10833289]

>>10833106
it's a heat engine baka. Just move enough heat and yeah you can power a car. You could even power a car with the temperature difference created by water evaporating driving a bunch of drinking birds. You'd need to store up the energy with a battery or something to be practical though. There are actually proposed power plants that generate significant amounts of power from water evaporating into the air. The catch is they only work well in hot dry places where freshwater is at a premium.

[Anonymous No.10833381]

>>10833289
can't you combine it with evaporative desalination?

[Anonymous No.10833565]

>>10831270
Why are you talking about something that has NOTHING to do with Stirling engines? Thermoelectric generators are mostly shit, have low efficiency.

[Anonymous No.10833975]

>>10833565
It is a thermogradient transducer just like the Stirling engine put it's advantageous in many ways.
It's only home tinkering autists that can't see that something requiring high tech equipment to manufacture beats old tin cans and rubber bands.
>>>/diy/

[Anonymous No.10834210]

>>10828014
Kockums builds a fairly large one that burns diesel fuel and LOx that the Swedish navy uses as a non-nuclear air-independent propulsion system in their submarines. IIRC, the Japanese use a licensed derivative of the same system in their boats as well.

I'd imagine that the power output is about the same as a small to midsize freestanding diesel genset.

[Anonymous No.10834229]

>>10832938
This would be like a small, road-going version of a gas-fired combined cycle power plant and should be able to manage similarly pornographic levels of thermal efficiency. A hybrid car that used exhaust and radiator heat to power a Stirling engine hooked up to an alternator to further top off the batteries would be a dick-hardeningly amazing piece of technology.

Ditto for a diesel-electric series hybrid truck that used a diesel-fired version of something like this >>10834210 to charge the batteries and power the drive motors.

[Anonymous No.10834254]

>>10829424
Usually simple stirling engines are loud and large.

[Anonymous No.10834275]

>>10829424
>>10834254

Someone ought to get the Alibaba chinks to build one of these: >>10834210 as a hyper-efficient version of those dirt cheap generators from Harbor Freight.