Stirling Engine Plan?

If you search "SES" or "Stirling Energy Systems" you can find some neat pictures of just this concept on a large scale.

There was a thread a while back about a 5-hp Stirling engine. Searching on that led to a number of hobby machinist examples. (And maybe some commercial ones, but my recall is unsure.)

My cloudy crystal ball says this technology will emerge from China and India, if it hasn't already.

Hi Tornado,

Actually, I think the technology is emerging in Canada, of all places.

thanks

Solar-heated Stirlings do exist - the US government sponsored extensive experimentation with free-piston Stirlings driven by solar heat. I don't know any reason why this could not be applied on a smaller, lower-tech scale, using air as the working fluid instead of more exotic gases and letting the unit pressurize itself as it runs. You would of course need more than a simple magnifying lens to get useful amounts of power; you would need at least a mirror and a relay system to get the rays to the hot side of the engine, and you would need to actively cool the cold side to get decent efficiency. But none of that is rocket science.

didn't think about cool side.thanks

I do not get why they make it so the stirling engine (the target) has to move during the day. I guess in their case, they are making electricity so they do not care. For normal people, having the stirling engine (the target) moving must be a major problem. Normal people might use the stirling engine to directly power fridges, or pump water or whatever and having the engine going up in the air at certain times of the day would probably mean the fridge or water pump would have to go up too! Really clumsy approach.

I have the tracking solar accumulator concept. Where you have 1 or 2 parabolic dishes on a frame on equatorial mount. I have done models and geeky smart people who have seen them have found no flaws.

I am gradually making a working model (it has a bicycle rim as the hole for continuous access to the focal area but so far, nobody else has the courage to make one and very few have the courage to voice an opinion on it. With it your stirling engine never moves. In tropical areas, it would probably make sense to have 2 dishes (counterrotating with the seasons and in temperate areas, one dish and a counterweight attached to the frame. You can see pictures etc at http://solarcookers.ning.com/

That is low tech and unproven. Scheffler dishes are proven (also on equatorial mount) and they would definitely do it. But they are a lot higher tech. Again, the stirling engine never moves. Either option should work for you. Just depends on your skill set.

Brian

interesting,thanks man

It will work but remember more parts you add more expensive it is. Right now the technology is in the point where you must put more money than getting the electricity from the grid, I mean money for all the devices plus maintenance including the batteries, and that is not practical, I hope someone invent new Stirling engines that Produce more with less money because I like them too.

thats what i was thinking to,thanks

http://www.greenpowerscience.com/STIRLINGENGINE1.html

check out that site ... I think you will like it.

cool,thankyou

The idea of a concentrated solar powered stirling engine is as old as the whole concept. The original patent for this has been filed by Robert Stirling.

I'm enthousiastic on this type of engines too. There are more Stirling fanatics on CR4, some didn't answer yet.

And indeed it is india where we can expect the revolution to emerge from: they have a high need for energy and they have sun.

A stirling engine is simple, but requires some special knowledge in case you want to work on it. It also requires special attention to the required high pressure loading.

But unknown is hated in most cultures.

In the sixties and seventies there have been numerous attempts to build stirling powered cars, but the high latency inherent to external combustion was the bottleneck. Strangely there seems to be no interest from car manufacturers to take the old drawings and build an hybrid car out of it. The latency issue is solved through the generator-battery-electric engine solution.

GA Gwen.

Thanks,

Stu.

interesting,thanks