Stirling Engine.

As said there is a wealth of inomration out there. Have a look my discussion in CR4 - there are some pointers in it.

Applications cover powering water pumps, driving an old gramaphone, powering a cooling fan, a submarine propulsion system, powering generators, marine installations, automotives, cooling, artificial hearts, space power systems. One interesting one I read about four years ago was concerned with using a Stirling engine to provide power for a soldier. In Iraq the US Army daily fly in thousands of batteries to power comms systems used by the troops. Think of the ecological and environmental problems caused by this - manufacture, transportationand disposal. The idea is to replace the need for batteries by having a power generation system driven by a Stirling engine. The heat source could come from the soldier; the cold source? Think of the ecological and environmental benefits world wide where systems need batteries.

As an engineer you have to use the grey cells. When Frank Whittle invented the jet engine the internet did not exist. He came up with the idea early during his career in the Royal Air Force (RAF) in UK. Steam turbines exsited and he moved on to gas turbines. He was in his teens when he first thought of the idea and developed it to build a working model later in his RAF career.

Respectfully start thinking. Don't seek other people to do your thinking for you. There are books, articles and information on Stirling engines throughout the world by the truck load. Go find it, read it, absorb it and identify a need for the application of a Stirling engine. Then start to think of ways of developing it. I would suggest first that you survey the current applications, see if any experience difficulties and then identify something that you can do to overcome a difficulty. Don't worry if you cannot get your solution to work. It tells other people of the route that you followed so that they can avoid it. That's not untypical of a research engineer's work. Thomas Edison tried hundreds of times to make a light bulb before succeeding. He didn't view all his efforts as failures, merely as ways of getting to building a sucessful product.

RobK