Are Stirling Engines the Future of Renewable Energy Storage?
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- Опубліковано 15 бер 2021
- Are Stirling Engines the Future of Renewable Energy Storage? Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/undecided and enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 3 extra months for free! Thanks to the rise of intermittent renewable energy sources, we’ve seen increased demand for new energy storage technologies, like batteries, pumped storage hydropower, and flywheels. But what if I told you that this little toy, a 200-year-old invention, combined with thermal energy storage might be a promising solution? Let’s explore the Stirling Engine and the future of renewable energy storage.
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What do you think? Do you know of any other unique storage solutions that I haven’t covered yet on the channel? And be sure to check out my video The Mechanical Battery Explained: A Flywheel Comeback? - ua-cam.com/video/8X2U7bDNcPM/v-deo.html
fuel cell tech is better than sterling engine.And don't know why?????
Hi Matt thank you for covering this subject you're not the only one who loves hot air engines I have a book on the subject I bought as a kid which even being as weird as I am still got me some odd looks at the time. :)
For me hot air engines still have a future in geothermal electricity production as unlike turbines systems they don't need the high temperatures or more importantly pressures.
I got roasted (pun intended) before when I mentioned this as people couldn't understand why you wouldn't want to use something as great as a turbine. They completely missed that lower temp & pressure opens up a step change in the areas it can be implemented. Maximum power isn't as important as maximum coverage, especially when you're talking something that can operate 24/7.
That you can combine it with energy storage is an incredible bonus.
I'm not sure how the calculations pan out but ground heat pumps that can operate at 400% efficiency could have enough energy production to still make a low but usable amount of electricity using a hot air engine powered generator. Again the aim is not so much efficiency as scaleability.
Just think how many large scale, low level temperature, geothermal hot air engined power stations you could build for the cost of one nuclear power plant... without fuel or waste.
@@helenlawson8426 But tell me why fuel cell tech is better than this?????.Anyone.
@@tonyk7509 Fuel Cells are a completely different technology with benefits and limitations which is why we need as many types of renewable energy production as possible. 'Better' is always a concept determined by what is required.
A fuel cell can be filled quickly and doesn't create anything but water but it is not good at ramping up power quickly which is why hydrogen fuel cell cars are always hybrid with a battery for instant power and regen braking. Put that fuel cell in an aircraft on the otherhand where the requirements are different and a fuel cell is better than a battery. A down side of hydrogen fuel cells is that at the moment 90% of it comes from fossil fuels so is not as clean as it might be a decade from now when more is plit from seawater.
So what I'm trying to say is 'best' is a tricky thing to pin down.
@@helenlawson8426 That's a lot of info .Thanks sir.Sir,I heard fuel cell tech is better for submarines rather than using a sterling engine based AIP.
"you couldnt live with your failure, and where did that bring you? back to me"- the sterling engine
hahah FOR THANOS!
ROFL!!!
this could also work with the flywheel
“Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives. Or should I say, I have.”
- the sterling engine
“When I’m done, half of lithium-ion will still be in use.”
- the sterling engine
Vindication is sweet
In Australia, there was a roadhouse out on the Nullarbor Plain that used a solar pond (a stratified thermal salt pond) and a stirling engine for its electricity. It was way back when photovoltaic panels were way too expensive and quite low efficiency, but it did the job and at the time everyone was raving about it.
Then everything changed when the Minerals Council attacked...
@@stephencoulter3613 The fucking mineral council.
@justan idiot Not likely in the Nullarbor... It's arid desert with essential no trees.
@justan idiot Why have most farmers cut these unreliable windmills up for scrap?
The people who fantasize about windmills have never owned one of those dangerous and unreliable piles of crap.
We took great pleasure cutting two of the legs on our windmill and pulling it down with a tractor.
Gday James - any links to that roadhouse you mentioned? I wouldnt mind buying a few of these and experimenting small scale. I had no idea they existed.
A couple years ago, I was really into Stirling engines, and my journey also started with this toy. I hired a few interns, did some work, and theorised the Stirling engine for 1 household in India. Unfortunately, it's incredibly difficult and expensive to build one, not to forget I didn't even consider the problem of storage at all.
But today, you've reinvigorated me. Thanks a lot !
Any new updates with your sterling engine work?
@@sleepyjoe06969 Still looking to build a strong team!
I’m thinking one of these can just pump water from a lower water barrel to a barrel higher above. When energy is needed that potential gets converted to electricity. It can “charge” at the same time while being used.
Stirling engines are also being used for power generation in landfills across the United States. The methane produced in landfills is not blended for uniform power density, thus it cannot be used in an internal combustion engine without damaging the engine with energy spikes. External combustion engines like the Sterling are the answer here.
I had never thought of this but it makes sense, the methane produced by anaerobic digestion is not very high grade
This is amazing, we need more landfills :))
Stirling
Which country?
@@g-r-a-e-m-e- edited to specify United States
Based on my minimal research, this seems like it would fit perfectly in geo-thermal power schemes.
I wonder if this is used in Iceland or is planned for future use?
Except for those pesky earthquakes resulting from geothermal. (Ref. Irving, Tx)
@@earthcoloredeyes5043 I know they're doing geo-thermal but not familiar with what specific tech they are using to harvest the thermal energy.
It looks like most geothermal is similar to traditional steam turbine thermal power stations.
@@EvilCerealBoX - I don't know enough about the tech. Most geothermal uses steam similar to other steam turbine thermal power stations. I am just wondering if Sterling engine tech could be more efficient and potentially less negative consequences over traditional models.
It looks like initially that the sterling engine tech is much more efficient than traditional geo-thermal models.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Totally. And not many moving parts. I wonder if anyone is seriously researching this?
I looked on my desk at my sad cup of coffee. It looked back at me and said I want to Sterling engine too!
It's the only way to drink coffee.
"The Force is strong with that cup of coffee."
I won't settle for less than a stirring Stirling-engine for my coffee!
And I drink my coffee black so ....
@@rogerstarkey5390 thats a flaw not a feature. caffeine is energy
I made a sterling (edit: stirling) engine as an engineering design project in school with readily available cheap materials to allow for poor communities to be capable of recreating and use to power low energy devices like electrical lights for homes. It was fun and quite a learning experience. Cool to see this topic on the channel
Would it be possible to make one, that fully powered a house including high power consumption devices like a gaming PC, fridge/freeze or a high amp pulling electric stove/heating/cooling?
@@EC-dz4bq it is definitely possible, but from my experience, the engine itself would be disproportionally larger in size than the device being powered
You should definitely make a youtube video demonstrating this. That sounds really cool for small scale applications.
I remember seeing a device a few years ago, very simple with cheap materials, that used a simple motor powered by a 20 kg mass that slowly fell over time, and could provide a few hours of electricity to power an average LED light for a room that was used in 3rd world countries. All you had to do was lift the mass 6 feet every few hours to reset it.
I think technologies like these, paired with water filtration and simple electronics like lighting, could go a very long way in helping alleviate 3rd world poverty and and the suffering connected with it.
neat did it work well?? combined with simple car batteries to store electriciy for a few hours at night
Another interesting feature of the Stirling engine: It's reversible. It can turn a heat differential into mechanical energy, but can also turn mechanical energy into a heat differential. Which is why one of its historic uses was as a cooling machine. It would be interesting to explore whether this could be utilized in combination with wind energy as an integrated energy storage system.
So we could make a sterling refrigerator
@@reddaxtor5662 Yes. In fact, that's how large-scale refrigerators used to work.
@@rockyblacksmith So they stopped making them now?
@@reddaxtor5662 So far as I know. Modern refrigeration systems based on evaporation and compression of a cooling fluid are much easier to make.
First saw Sterling engines in a video from Lindybeige. He suggested putting them on top of server farms in freezing cold regions. The server farms creating a massive amount of heat combined with the surrounding subzero temperatures would generate a lot of energy.
It would defeat the purpose of putting them in cold regions, so no
STIRLING!!!!!
@@comitatocentrale2022 no it wouldn't, because the heat is still leaving anyway. The heat is just leaving a little slower.
@@comitatocentrale2022 it would actually be an improvement, as the stirling engine is actively pumping the heat out of the enclosed space
Stirling engine submarine used by Sweden allowed them to sink a US carrier in a war game. The Stirling engine was so quiet that it was the critical factor in remaining hidden. I've always been fascinated by the technology. It's both simple and genius.
It's sometimes easy to be proud being Swedish; it's not many counties that make their own submarines, jet fighters, battleships, cars & trucks (semi's), plus a whole lot more, including "soft" things like long paid parental leave (480 days/child, which of 390 is based on your earlier salary), and at the same time being a population of only 10,2 million.
@@magnuslarsson337 War profiteering. Don't forget artillery. Same game as the swiss, but they cornered other markets in that field.
I want to learn more about this!
@@JJ-rm7jw Gotland class submarine. The sub was on loan to the US to test anti-submarine tactics, during the wargame the Gotland class sub managed to take several images of the USS Ronald Reagan effectively sinking the carrier.
@@carbon1255 Yes, and the artillery is one of the most advanced systems in the 🌍: Archer Artillery System.
The Guided artillery shell M982 Excalibur is also worth mentioning, but it’s nothing I am morally proud of.
And the Swiss are great. Excellent mechanical precision engineering (not only watches), highest patent per capita ratio, great Fortune 500 companies per capita, direct democracy, etc.
And in 2014, the Swiss were very close to purchasing our (the Swedish) jet fighter JAS-39 version E/F which would have served them very well.
Great idea. My wife bought me one of those models for my birthday 2 years ago, they are beautifully made, Kontax Stirling Engines.
They're so cool. Fascinating little devices.
seems great, wonder if i could charge a phone during a camping with something similar
@@ordo3k4os Unfortunately these small engines only output enough power to light an Led, you would need to run it for days to get any useful charge into a battery,
There are larger engines available but they are very expensive, Phillips made a limited number of 220V/200 Watt models, the MP1002 CA, to power radio equipment in the field, this engine runs on kerosene, it has a working pressure of around 160 to 170 p.s.i. so I wouldn't want to be too close if it let loose.... Probably better off with a lithium power bank running off a solar panel
@@sofa-lofa4241 What is that, 11 bar? It isn't that bad unless you are directly working on it when it is pressurised.
thx mate :-)
The Swedish Gotland class submarine uses a Stirling Engine and is famous for scoring a kill against the USS Ronald Reagan in exercises. Really a remarkable engine!
And the lead designer of that sterling engine has lifetime rights to use those patents commercially. He founded the company "Swedish Stirling" and is using the sterling engine to burn combustible rest gases from industry (mostly focusing on ferrocrome industry) to generate electricity.
Diesel-electric submarines have accumulators that are absolutely silent.
@@peceed could you elaborate on this "accumulator "
@@Jake-zk3eb "accumulator" = "recheargeable battery", lead-acid
Swedish Gotlund class submarines are propelled by diesel electric engines. The stirling engines drive a generator to recharge batteries used for various on-board appliances.
Stirling engines aren't cost efficient enough for much more than toys. Putt-putt boats are cool engines, too, but can't propel a toy boat bigger than a cigarette butt.
Good to hear your phrase "part of the energy mix." That's the most realistic statement I've heard about the future of energy production.
Yes, I think Sterling engines could be combined with several different kinds of renewable energy tech to make great improvements.
Keyword is "mix". Even today, electricity is produced with many different methods. Even cars use several different energy sources. It would be silly to think that in the future all energy will come from one source.
@@luddity Stirling engines are an efficient solution at capturing waste heat from other energy generators.They are frequently utilised at combined-cycle power plants to increase generate electricity from heat that would otherwise be lost.
The constraint is seals. They wear out quickly. Trying to seal an inert gas in a moving system is the issue. The sealing surfaces needed are insanely expensive to achieve, and require constant replacement.
I see in a pinned comment you discussed using a flywheel to store energy. There was a Popular Mechanics magazine issue from back in 1969, -70, or early-1971 I read while still in High School (I graduated in 1971) discussing how someone built one that was 1800 pounds in his basement. The axis was supported using an electromagnet powered with a 9-volt battery. The article mentioned that it was so well balanced that he could start it spinning with a nudge of his index finger. I hadn't remembered this article until watched your video.
Combining technologies really will provide all sorts of opportunities. From tidal, to wind, to solar, to geothermal... lots of options to choose from.
Hey Matt, I absolutely fell in love with the work you're doing. I am from India and the renewable story is not that great presently here specially in the EV sector. Still I am highly in anticipation that the green energy could become the norm in the 15-20 years time. Couldn't thank you enough if you add some data related to present "cost per unit storage" taking all variables into account for this technology. Also if you can make a separate video for cost comparison of all not-so-popular energy storage techniques that will be highly enlightening.
Having a very old brain, I was initially confused as to how the Stirling engine stored energy. But then I perceived that the energy is stored as heat (the molten aluminum in this example) and the Stirling energy can convert that heat into mechanical energy/electricity. Now it makes sense.
Somehow old brains seem to me to be better at understanding _and explaining_ thermodynamics than younger ones. There's a difference between being able to state what happens and understand _how and why_ it happens.
The first time I see a Stirling Engine I was impressed because I saw that it can be sourced by solar energy, Wood energy, leaf energy, and many other sources of heat. But the main problem is their control. it does not respond fast enough to load changes. Obviously, we can insert control in this kind of motor to improve response, valves to improve flux control, heat insulation to minimize loss. and many other improvements. I will keep thinking about it.
The best Stirling engine is the Zagari sterling engine, it uses a 2 stroke engine that blows fresh air in by the use of the crank shaft chamber.
I think about this every time i pass a refinery and see those flare pipes burning off excess gas
one of my friends in Dallas was working on a robust dirty gas incinerator that would boil off produced water from wells... didn't hear how it worked out, but it was a pretty clever combination of 2 needs that could be deployed at well sites and save a lot of cleanup costs related to transporting for treatment...
These seem like the ideal thing to pair with photovoltaic thermal hybrid panels.
Especially when you consider the extra efficiency gained from cooling being applied to the solar PV.
The Stirling engine proves its usefulness as an engine when paired with the heat exchanger of another engine as its power source
@@clementoseitano7568 It does. Imagine all the machinery we have that needs cooling. Using stirling engines to convert the excessive heat they create into electricy could give us a lot of "free" energy.
However, there is another alternative worth looking at, the Seebeck engine. It does pretty much the same thing, converting temperature differences to electricity but it's all solid state elctric circuitry so no moving parts. At the moment Seebeck engines cost more and are less efficient than Stirling engines but that may change soon.
As I live in a northern area and our sunlight is limited especially in winter, I have often thought of different ways to use renewable energy to power my home. One of the ways I thought of was the use of 2 mirrored dishes to focus sunlight on a sterling engine and to have the power they create charge my Tesla Powerwall system. I thought this would work well combined with 2 VAWTs. Now after seeing this video I’m convinced this would be an excellent way to power my home and sell back excess power to the grid (if I decide to be attached to the grid). Thank you for the new perspective on Sterling engines!
Matt, the timing of this video is just insane. For past 2 weeks, I was studying sterling engines all the time. And when I think I understand how it works, you show me perfect use cases. Well done
Glad it helped!
Thank you Matt. I have often wondered why Sterling engines were not being used for energy solutions. Now I know that some very smart companies are using them.
STIRLING!!!!!
ha! I bought that SAME unit off Amazon for XMas after seeing Chris Ramsay's video. Nice
I couldn't resist when I saw one.
Interesting use for the Sterling engine. I looked into SE about 25 years ago and decided the regular type required some engineering equipment for the close tolerance of the piston not suited to the DIY tinkerer on a low budget. However, there is another version with a "liquid piston", the fluidine. Time to brush off those old books, especially about the fluidine and see what I can come up with.
Also Sterling Engine mechanisms are used in RTG (Radioactive Thermo-electric Generators) for deep space probe power supplies running off the decay heat from radioactive material.
No probes use SRGs (Stirling Radioisotope Generators)
The RTG you are referring to uses thermocouples a form of solid state generator that uses the properties of bi-metal junctions to generate current.
SRGs are significantly better than RTGs for a lot of stuff but as of yet have not been deployed on any systems.
@@nocare Thanks for the correction; good to know!
@@nocare how big of a radiator assembly would we need to provide sufficient Cold Side on a Stirling in space? I presume it’s at least still less than we’d need for coolant in a proper space reactor?
@@kaitlyn__L If you use the same size radiator you get more power output because of higher efficiencies.
OR
A smaller radiator to get the same power output in a smaller space.
Radiator size directly affects efficiency as these are bot Carnot Cycle limited heat engines. A larger radiator sits at a lower temp improving performance.
A stirling has higher efficiency so the same size radiator will be cooler as it needs to dissipate less total heat.
Shrinking the radiator to get its temp back up to match the original RTG would result in identical power output from both devices.
@@nocare I see, thank you. So it’s still as simple as the thermal envelope equilibrium as with an RTG. I suppose I thought being solid state vs moving might have some impacts on the electrical power we pull out. So, could we potentially even downsize the block of fissile material too, compared to an RTG? (If we had fixed power requirements for whatever reason)
Wonder if you could combine this with geothermal, have the top plate at surface level and the base plate 10' under the ground and you'd likely have a temperature differential for most of the year (depending on climate).
Clever idea! If it worked each house could create its own energy. I wonder how much energy it could create / whether it would need extra energy from outside.
Also, it could be used as a pump for immersion-cooled PCs to allow for single or even dual-phase immersion coolants to be efficiently cycled through a radiator and back into the reservoir cooling the components. The solution would run silent and be quite efficient.
I had the same Idea when I saw this.
There are so many ways to optimize these kinds of systems with both new and old tech. For some examples, the hot side can be heated by a combo of vacuum insulation and focused/concentrated Solar power (briefly covered in the video), whether parabolic reflectors, fresnel lenses, "funnel designed solar cookers" type solar concentrators.
But what's interesting and exciting is the new materials that can increase the efficiency of these. Carbon nanotubes we now know, make extremely black and light absorbing material--excellent to absorb the heat of the Sun, and they may also have some electrical side properties so it might be possible to convert some of the Solar energy directly into electricity while primarily using it for heat.
Now we have extreme thermal conducting materials like graphene and cubic boron arsenide. And while really high quality graphene is still slow and very expensive to make, you don't need the really high quality stuff to get good thermal conductive properties, the graphenic-graphites (i.e. pseudo graphenes, which are the most common) work well in that regard. I will be testing it in the near future, but I think that besides these altered graphites, I think cellulose nanocrystals converted to carbon and especially graphite hold a lot of promise. They are sort of modified nature's equivalent to carbon nanorods. And the processes to make them are not that hard nor expensive (well, they might be for bulk quantities, but the nice thing about these materials is that a little usually goes a long way). And combine the very thermally conductive materials with a passive evap system (waste/dirty water) to further remove heat from the cool side.
Basically if you optimize insulation, heating, and cooling efficiencies, you up the overall efficiency some as well, though most of the losses are in the actual conversion of heat to electricity and/or then storage of electricity, Efficiency in terms of more of smaller size, less material, etc.
Oh, and the above system can be reversed for nighttime use. Put the cold/cooling side in a vacuum insulated container with a very IR transparent top, put a parabolic reflector, Solar "funnel", or the like under it or the container within, point the reflect straight up to a clear shot of the sky, and then radiate the IR into space cooling that otherwise very well insulated area. Then pipe the hot side underneath the ground to a stable, near room temp. You will get enough of a temp differential to power it over night, though it won't be as good as the day time, Solar driven system. You just switch between the two systems as your power source between night and day.
I've always thought that the interesting part of this technology is that they can work on heat or cold. Perhaps you could use solar heat during the day to make ice, or dry ice, and then use its big phase-change latent heat (cold) to power one of these at night. Or if you have a big source of cold, like water, to create a temperature differential.
It works, but of course you’re putting in the latent heat to get a phase change. So much like hydrogen you’re only storing energy rather than making it. But being only 30% efficient, each way, makes it far more lossy than hydrogen. Therefore, you’d need a combination of the Stirling engine being cheaper to build than batteries, and the power cheap and plentiful enough (like solar or wind they’d have to shut off otherwise) to make it worth it. And even then, the energy resale prices later in the day are such that they would have to be extremely cheap to set up to make it worth keeping only 9% of the energy. But yeah the physics of it works in theory. These things were explored somewhat in Victorian times, various engineers and businessmen proposing to feed waste heat and waste cold into them and so on, it’s pretty interesting to read about.
Something like this? www.pcm-tes.com/solar-energy-storage/
WOW!!! Thank you Matt for bringing this information!!! It really is amazing how ahead of their time some of these very old inventers were!! It really is great to see that old tech can still be used to save the world!
it's not going to save the world, it might help a bit.
it isn't powerful enough to replace much but it does have it's uses.
also back then companies had to actually compete, so they had a reason to go and find new tech to get more sales.
today that isn't the case, too much back dealing and corruption. it really does show too, our progress is pretty slow compared to what happened in the big boom of tech at those times. granted the tech we have now would kill most people from back then, from shock alone. still the leaps they made back then are something to behold. now it's all profit driven and we get micro steps towards progression because they want to milk as much money as possible over as long a duration as possible.
Nothing old!
The first explanation of a sterling engine that makes sense to me, thank you!
My grandpa has a solar system he bought at auction from los alamos lab.
He has a stack of polished aluminum sheets that are designed to plate a parabolic surface to focus the suns energy into a few hundred feet of pyrex tubes with stainless steel pipe running through the center. This then heats oil to around 700 degrees and the hot oil is stored underground where it can stay hot for weeks and can be called upon to create steam.
I love the concept. It's perfect for any kind of "waste heat" source.
Bravo, they finally start to understand, that all forms of tech, new and old. Will be the ways forward. Only took most of humanity over 100 years to get it.
The two world wars pushed the use of oil/petroleum to the forefront and the fossil fuel industry then refused to let their position and profits to decline.
I've personally been interested in using them to replace home solar panels. Idk if there have been any new breakthroughs for solar panels but they used to be 15-18% thermally efficient, and even traditional roofs create a massive temperature differental
In hot climates you could also use it to augment them - PV works much better when cooled, a fluid-based cooling could keep the PV at a better efficiency point and could run a Stirling.
I've seen an old 4" or 5" bore "Rider" operating at farm machinery expo's in Australia. About 4 ft high. Run by vintage mech enthusiasts as a demo, the beautiful smooth lubricated piston coming partly outside the bore, with the cyclic repetitive whisper of air being pushed, is magical. I think only about 1 or 2 HP, if that. Wood fired, under the base. I want one.!!
One of the best tech out there for electrical production ...
The application of this engine can be used all over the place ...where ever there is a thermal difference..
if solar converts only 10% on the energy, and the stirlign engine up to 40%, can you just put mirrors and focus the light on a giant bucket of sand and heat it up?
Solar panels actually hate heat, they dont work on solar heat but solar photons, light. Photo...voltaic. produce voltage when light is present...
that's what the ones looking like satelite dish are. the "bowl" is mirrors and the part that get heated is at the center of the dish, on the top of the tower
@@MmeHyraelle Stirling powered generator could then be placed under solar pannels to use the temperature difference between the waste heat of solar panels and the shade to further improve efficiency (heat into electricity, cooler solar panels)
I love these videos. It's like the 1970s returns.
I’m learning so much about the efficiency and the carbon footprint of storage. You’d just assume a battery is a net positive, but if the production and maintenance isn’t justified by the amount of energy shifted to renewables, even those “green” solutions can be anything but.
Most excellent. I am 75 and probably won’t see the way this eventually pans out but I hope it does. Ideas like this are great and certainly more beneficial to all of society than the division and war making that consume so much of our planning and national budgeting. Imagine how much more quickly we could realize the ultimate benefit to society of an idea like this if we only targeted 50% of our 750 billion dollar defense budget of just the US.
Imagine a Stirling engine the size of a small town.
There is no steam in a stirling engine
Edit: my comment doesn't make sense anymore cause he edited his comment after I corrected him.
I was thinking of all the ambient heat lost from homes that could incorporate this tech.
I just want to see a massive one in the style of that cup one, the larges i saw was ~1m or so in diameter. (and that was just a video, imagine at a makerfair or museum!)
The temperature differential would have to be correspondingly huge to overcome things like the inertia of the giant wheel and the force of gravity working against the enormous pistons.
@@Kevin_Street you could use magnets as a jump starter?
Revenant Robert Stirling would be so happy to what we've done with his invention
Sterling engines are used in swedish submarines. Extremly silent and durable, can submerge for weeks without nuclear... One of them "sank" a u.s aircraft carrier of the Nimitz class during a joint naval exersise a
few years back. Greetings from Gothenburg Sweden.
Always good to watch your stuff, with socio-economic impact of technology rather than tech for tech’s sake, interestingly Stirling efficiency depends on the temp difference between hot end and cold end
Ok so, why don't we dig large holes deep underground, or use existing ones like salt mines, where the temperature is relatively constant to built massive sterling farms. You could pump a fluid from the surface (through a heat exchanger) to ensure a constant flow of almost guaranteed temperature differential. The sterling farm would need large metal sinks built into the rock to ensure maximum heat exhange with the bedrock, thus ensuring the cave stays roughly the same temperature all the time. I imagine on some days the temp above ground would be too close to the temp below ground for the engines to work, but not for very long. The temperature above ground ranges a lot throughout the day. So at least partial generation year round. And of course you could connect them to a grid so that stations can experience different temperatures and thus differing generation levels, making up for any laggers. Finally, places with far more unpredictable weather may be the best choice for these type of plants, as caves tend to stay the annual average, but above ground would vary greatly.
this is the first thought i had. Generation would also be best done in places with more extreme temperatures. e.g. any desert which could lead to a lot more development in those areas and potentially turning them into energy production hotspots
Probably because it is expensive to dig far into Earth's crust (it can cost thousands per foot), maintaining it is complicated and expensive and well... there is that whole "tectonic plates move" thing.
The Kola well cost over $100,000,000 to dig. The temps at the bottom did reach around 190c, though.
I recently saw a video on british metro about how it's heating up beyond ambient temp thanks to waste heat from trains and shit in the system. one would think a bunch of stirling engines could be used to cool the tunnels and recapture the lost energy. It seems their big solution right now is to just vent the heat out into the environment, which is pretty wasteful
Great Video! Need to get the younger generation really excited about this tech. Maybe a quasi toy that can power a tablet or charge a phone, or, a tablet. Making heat conduits and radiating conduits will be the real challenge. No wait; conveying the understanding of all the components will be the real challenge! Being able to print a Stirling would be super cool!
It's common for more rural people to use outdoor wood burning stove to pump heated water into their homes through coils their furnace blows over. I've been interested in gasification systems that can generate electricity and use the heated coolant to heat a house the same way as the wood stoves. It would be interesting to take that concept and add a Sterling engine into the coolant line to use some of that excess heat to generate additional electricity. This wouldn't work for everyone, but it could for people with enough land for tree removal services to dump at. It low priced dumping fees would encourage companies to bring their waste wood there and help pay for the system as a whole.
The title is misleading, imo. The Stirling engine has no future as an energy storage device. Perhaps the title should read, "Is heat better at storing energy than kinetic or chemical methods?" or, perhaps, "Is the Stirling engine better than the steam turbine at converting heat to electricity?"
Yes, I agree. Stirling energy is a converter. All “storage” or “production” methods of energy are really just converting energy. If we started seeing it this way it would change how we work with energy. Also, matter is made of energy. No matter what. If we can convert matter into energy directly we would have basically 100% efficiency.
@@trolly4233 Storage and production are two very different processes. One produces energy, the other stores it. They are *not* both converting energy, only one is, the other is storing energy. For example. A kinetic energy storage device stores energy as kinetic energy. If the energy you want to store arrives from the producer in a different form, such as heat it would also need to be converted into kinetic energy before it can be stored as kinetic energy. A Stirling engine might be useful then, however, a steam turbine may well be better, if only on the grounds that steam turbines are the go-to device people use to convert heat into kinetic energy.
@@makhoe1 you can’t produce energy. “Producers” are really just capturing and converting energy, most usually into electrical energy. Energy is not created nor destroyed, only converted.
@@trolly4233 "Energy producers" is an industry term.
@@trolly4233 Nuclear
Hurray! Thanks Matt, for taking my advice of doing a program about Azelio’s amazing tech!!!
I love when simple solutions solve complex problems and here all pieces nicely falls in place.
👍
Hi I worked on a project in the UK to commercialize a linear free piston sterling engine helium inside with linear alternator making 1kw inside a gas boiler when heating the water or heating the house, in theory it would run off grid no crankshaft the original concept was from Sunpower based in Athens Ohio this was the hot bed for linear free piston sterling engines one was used as a cyro cooler for the space shuttle fridge
I do have in my home for many years a version of that toy, mostly made of a kind of cardboard. Bought for my at that time young kid ( 10 years old). This toy will work on a temp difference of ca 20 degrees. But is very inefficient. My now grownup boy , mechanical engineer at the moment, told me that for good working and efficient running stirling engines we need a big temperature difference. That 600 degrees aluminium, or molten salt, will do.
But ONLY if you can use thermal energy (sunlight by mirrors) directly for heating up the salt / aluminium or directly driving the engine.
A battery will have an efficiency up to 95% or higher from electricity to storage to electricity again. The stirling , as you told , only 38%. This make this solution perfect for those mirror systems, but less good for storage energy from solarpanel parks. (I do know that in Spain there is a mirror driven generator with uses molten salt for night delivery of energy.)
May be we can increase the rendement of the stirling ....when we can increase the temp difference more. But that will ask a lot of the used materials.
Another big disadvantage for stirling engines... a relative lo energy output related to the size of that engine. So only good usable on static installations.
It is amusing how many commenters here cannot spell "Stirling" correctly, even though a correct prototype is available in the title of this video.
I love the Stirling Engine. I have 4, small ones, tiny really. I would like to buy one LTD that can generate some 40W. It is not on the market.
Wonder how that math calculation works out? Heat +volume of expansion and x the flywheel momentum transferred? Wonder how Freon works as the expansion gas in a closed loop?
I guess you just have to settle for buying ten LTD-engines of 4 Watt each.
Or we could just invent one that'll do the trick.
I made a Kelvin-thunderstorm that produced a whopping 2 microWatt so if I do that 20 million times were there. ;-)
@@DreadX10 have you taken into account any resistance?
I had an idea for Sterling Engines a while back. My idea is to use the temp differential between surface and subsurface. Basically the bottom part would get installed below ground. With the right areas the temp differential would be substantial. Imagine a permafrost powered engine. Or maybe in a hot desert.
The "problem" of not being able to rev power up and down quickly enough with a stirling engine in a car is because they tried to propel the car from the stirling engine itself. What they should have done, and what should be done today, is using the stirling engine to power an electrical generator to run an E-car. This exact methodology is basically what diesel-electric locomotives used for hauling freight do. They use a diesel engine running either a DC generator or an AC alternator-rectifier which powers the traction motors that drive the locomotive and provides enough torque to pull a very long line of freight cars. There is no mechanical connection between the diesel engine and the wheels. If diesel trains can do it, cars can do it. =^x^=
Can you do a video about concentrated solar power?
@Chris Tombs yes, but it has the advantage of the capacity to store the energy
I would like to see a video exploring the problems with mining rare earth metals. A video that would deal with the problems raised, for example, in the documentary "The Dark Side Of Green Energies".
Yes it is and this is what I am going to do in Portugal, you will see it all on my channel, as I get started on renovating my portugese house from next week.
OK I am more interested in liberating ourselves from big system control ie more of the self sufficiency lifestyle. So what I am going to do is build a heat storage unit to store daytime solar energy. Energy from solar panels will heat a night storage heater and the heat will drive a stirling to produce electricity at night. I estimate I will need about 50 to 100watts to run a house. All it has to do is power led light and a TV or laptop. Big power jobs such as running a hoover or a washing machine will be done in the daytime when abundant real time electricity is available.
You touched on magnetic conveyance of electricity. I wish you would explore that more (maybe in conjunction with the Stirling Engine).
*Stunning presentation!* Your work is so professional, so thoughtful and more often than not, covering material that is very far from mainstream. Will look into AZLOF.
Also look into startup Swedish Sterling
@@jojapja Looks like both STRLNG and AZLOF went public on the same day. Weird.
Thank you! Cheers!
They would be excellent in space.
If the jury still out, then we need a new jury panel.
The main issue is that, while space is really cold, its also a near perfect vacuum. Being able to dump heat by radiating it away is mostly done through convection, so since theres not really any particles for a heat sink to interact with in space, you wouldnt really be able to effectively use a stirling engine in that environment.
On a planet, however, thats a different story. Mars it would work well on, especially if you were able to use the ground as a heat sink. The atmosphere is a bit too thin to be able to do it.
@@monkieassasin In reverse , however, you would absorb heat from the sun on one side, assumingly the bottom side of, what I consider to be the classic style of sterling engine, whilst the opposing plate is exposed to the atmosphere inside the craft, acting as a primarily or secondary source of heat for the crew. I'm not sure that I am clear on your hypothesis. What you stated about the absent of a medium, such as air, to conduct the transfer of heat is correct, however, if one plate is never exposed to the sun, then said plate will act as it's own medium for heat transfer. It has always been my understanding that when a surface is exposed to the sun, it will become extremely hot, where as a surface turned away from the sun becomes extremely cold. However, my knowledge of such thing are quite rudimentary and I may be making assumptions out of more ignorance than facts then, I do offer my sincerest apologies.
@@andrewjackson9697 No worries bro :D
Im a physics undergrad in my senior year, so my own understanding is not perfect, but from what I understand about the matter, you must remember that work is done when heat flows, not from heat itself. In other words, its change in heat over time that does work, or the derivative of heat. That means, with no proper way to have the heat flow from your surface that is being hit by the sun to a heat sink, you still will have a problem generating any viable heat, especially considering any considerable stirling engine is quite a bit heavier for its energy generation capacity compared to high efficiency solar panels or nuclear battery technology.
Finally, the intensity of energy from the sun falls off quickly as you move away from the sun, at a rate of to the power of 2, so that if you got twice the distance away from the sun as the earth, youd only have 1/4 the heat, meaning a significantly bigger stirling engine to be needed to generate the same amount of energy. In regards to space, since its so costly to get anything into it, its of the upmost importance that the systems not only be efficient, but also requiring as little mass as possible.
The current technology that we have that is most promising is nuclear technology, as many isotopes with half lifes of a few years produce lots of beta radiation, which is just high energy electrons, and are easily captured to produce energy for many years, without much mass use.
The technology actually has alot of applications for here on earth as well, but due to them using materials that can be used to potentially create nuclear weapons, it has not been explored for on-Earth use.
Their efficiencies are much lower, being only 5 to 8 percent, but the vast difference in the amount of mass needed makes it significantly better for space applications.
I do wonder though, if we could apply a stirling engine combined with a nuclear battery, to harness the heat from the nuclear reactions as well to make it all efficient, while also using the excess heat to keep the spacecraft warm.
@@monkieassasin The Voyages Program, launched in the seventies, was powered by three nuclear power sources radioisotope thermal generators (RTG's) that produced about 400 watts of electrical power. I believe that we are still in. contact with one of them today. Nuclear is the power of the future here, and in space. Nuclear batteries for your electric car. Nuclear batteries to run your house. Solar and wind are a joke. Harness gravity is your next best bet if you're not ken on nuclear. Gravity is Always there. Solar and wind might due if you are camping, ( might). I believe you are on to something with the nuclear, Sterling Engine idea. The best thing about the Sterling is that it is not about the amount of heat, but how great the difference in temperature. Sterling engines are the true multi fuel engines anyway.
@@andrewjackson9697 100% agree
Great presentation.The only thing that has ever concerned me about the Stirling Engine is that it is reciprocating. Translating reciprocating motion to rotary involves parts wear and replacement. And something that moves wears out faster than something stationary - including computers. LOL
Great video! Your production value/content and scripting keep me very interested and I ALWAYS learn so much from your presentations. I have always been interested in ways to protect our environment and harvest and use energy efficiently. That said, what do you know about saltwater batteries? I just ran across a company that has developed systems for home and commercial use. They claim to be very environmentally friendly and appear to be somewhat efficient. I'd be most interested to get your take on the technology! Thanks Matt!
The company that made concentrated solar Stirling engines in US went bankrupt years ago. Perhaps maintenance is too much, is there a con we don't know about.
pretty sure what "went wrong" was that the cost of photo voltaics dropped faster than they expected.
I wonder if this could be an application for geothermal.
In many senses it already can according to the CEO. Its about the costumer to be able to integrate its system with TES POD
I just watched a video on thermal photovoltaic energy storage. It seemed too complex and error prone just for energy storage. I made some stupid comment about flywheels being a better solution... and then I see this. lol. This really DOES look much more practical.
Actually, ALL heat engines utilize a temperature difference for converting power. It's not limited to Stirling engines. The only differences the Stirling engine has over other heat engines are: 1) it's a closed system, unlike ICEs that are open cycle, and 2) the working fluid is in a constant gaseous phase, unlike steam turbines that operate using the Rankine cycle whose working fluid undergoes phase change from gas to liquid and vice versa.
Also the Stirling engine, like all other heat engines, does not store power, it simply converts heat energy to mechanical work. The energy storage occurs in the phase change material (which in itself is a cool piece of tech) that traps the heat and releases it in a controlled manner to fuel the engine. PCMs are great for storing heat because of the high amount of energy they can store and release (due to the latent heat) while maintaining a constant temperature.
Stirling engines in server farms, it should cut down on power costs.
or for use on a fusion reactor to recover some lost heat
Every country located on the equator should have this as electricity would be available 24/7 couples with wind
well, your argument is somewhat spurious as at the equator they have plenty of sunshine anyways to make electricity.
@@ursodermatt8809 I mean during the night!
@@gabougabou19
you will find a battery much more cheaper
@@ursodermatt8809 but using sterling to stock the energy during the night!
The main issue with sterling engines in the past has not been the efficiency, but how much power you can actually generate at the output for it's size/weight ratio. That's why it was never really used in vehicles. Also maintenance used to be an issue but not any more. Where size and weight are not so much an issue, like generating power from a temperature difference it's a viable stationary power source. But do the homework, you'll see that for getting a decent amount of power out of a small unit you will need a high temperature difference, for these units also it is often not enough to have just a heatsink in open air to get rid of the heat but if generating a decent amount of power you will also need a way of cooling the cold end, like running water. This could be a bonus though to generate your hot water. If run at a high power level you might end up with more hot water than you can actually use, so I suspect the fine tuning would be to size the power output of the sterling engine not just to your power requirements and heat difference used but also to your capability to keep the cool side cool beyond using it to heat your water. Taking all this into account I see more of a use for it in an industrial size setting where you can change some of the constraints compared to a domestic setting.
I found a really cool paper titled "Stirling Engine Design Manual". I just started reading it but I am finding it really interesting. The study funded by the DOE but delegated to NASA-Lewis Research Center. William R. Marini is the one who wrote the paper in April 1978
Thanks for sharing!
30% efficient power storage doesn't sound very effective to me.
Well, all power storage is pretty inefficient.
Great video. Thanks. I was thinking of how they would work in geothermal that would put the drillers back on the job. The center of the US has a huge dangerous caldera that needs to be cooled down. Let's get some energy out of it.
Cool! I own some Azelio stock here in Sweden, good to see it mentioned on this channel. Promising technology, but needs to be show-cased in larger and larger applications, to get more market attention.
Nice! And I agree ... they need to do some larger scale projects to get some attention.
I dont know about energy storage companies but I can recommend some other swedish companies such: Minesto. They have a unique way of producing energy from ocean currents and tidal power with their dragon kite Deep Green. Reaching very favorable LCOE already. Just signed MOU with Schneider Electric, a french giant in energy systems etc. And i would like to recommend: Swedish Sterling and also the company Climeon which works in the geothermal field.
Using a sealed quantity of gas means the unit must be sealed. Stirling engines are large and very expensive for the power they produce.
Swedish Stirlig is another company also using stirling engines to turn residual gases into electricity with unparalleled efficiency.
One of the problems with Stirling engines is that they do best with a working fluid that approximates the characteristics of an ideal gas. Helium is almost perfect, and hydrogen is highly, highly flammable and explosive when it leaks and combines with air.
If only we had at some point in our history discovered vast reserves of helium sequestered geologically; we surely would have recognized what a rare and precious resource that was, and not squandered it willy-nilly on frivolous playthings.
Lol true
FANTASTIC!! I have researched this topic. But learned heck of *alot* from this video.
I've always thought that combining TEC technology with a Stirling engine could do the trick... use the wasted heat (of pratically anyghing) to your advantage
there's almost no wasted heat if you put it in an insulated box with foil reflectors to contain the heat, also increases it's efficiency. the best part about this engine is it's literally a thermodynamic engine that runs on the basic principles of thermodynamics and it doesn't get any simpler than that for what it's capable of doing. the only thing that affect it's power output is the the working pressure inside the cylinder and the temperature difference between the hot and cold sides. some people can't grasp at the applications you can use this thing for and why it is so absolutely efficient that nothing else out there is capable of out performing it.
At the same time, the Swedish government is shutting down our nuclear power plants and starting to import electricity from other countries that generate electricity from coal.
Socialism
That was very cool! Thanks for digging this one up.
I always loved the idea of using them in conjunction with parabolic mirrors.
Annoying to put advertising in the video. I already pay for UA-cam
This why I stopped. Makes no sense,
Another great video Matt, thanks for all the great content. It would be interesting to see a video on completely DC powered homes.
Yes, as long as the difficulty of non-self extinguishing arcs is included.
Matt a video on that Arizona solar/sterling power plant and if there are plans to build more would be great.
I always wondered about a multi tiered liquid air / stirling engine energy storage system; you could store air as a liquid in a tube, and as you compressed it it would get hot, which you could use to run a stirling engine to increase the efficiency by using the waste heat, and then when you released the now room temperature liquid air, it would generate a cold temperature in addition to the raw force, also letting you run a stirling engine to further increase round trip efficiency.
I'm sure there's a reason we don't use such a system but it always seemed like an elegant form of energy storage to me, personally.
Sweden has submarines which use something similar. They evaporate liquid oxygen on the heat sink, super-cooling it, and use the resulting gaseous oxygen to burn diesel fuel on the heat input, superheating it. The result is a diesel-electric submarine which can stay submerged for weeks and run as fast, submerged, as it does on the surface. Doesn't have the range of a nuclear submarine but it's orders of magnitude cheaper. Also, since a Stirling produces an oscillating motion, they don't need to turn a crank; attach it to a linear alternator and it produces pure sine-wave AC power; you just have to regulate the system to keep the frequency where you want it.
Hi Matt.
I love the channel you offer great insight into topics no little or nothing about.
When I saw the steering engine I instantly wonder if it could gf use at the north or south poles of the moon where there is constantly day light of over 100 centigrade and yet craters in distant dark with -150 centigrade.
I'm happy sterling engines are getting attention.They do have down sides but as a means of passive power generation or main power generation if scaled correctly is something I believed was possible. Then possibly combine this with a heat pump I see great potential.
Used in an energy storage application, efficiency could be improved a lot by combining with district heating, like in a project where the energy is stored in hot pebbles, to drive both a turbine and district heating.
Great video, have you looked into Thorium nuclear reactors? Molten salt has grabbed my attention because of the safety features compared to water cooled nuclear. I thought I would share, seems like an interesting topic considering the pinch point of electricity generation.
A couple of heat sources for a stirling engine could be some waste products from a molten salt reactor: Cesium or Strontium.
Sealed inside sealed lead blocks covered with stainless steel these heat sources can provide heat power for way longer than the motor components (bearings) last.
I've always heard about Stirling engines but never knew how they worked pretty cool pretty cool indeed especially for the molten battery molten metal battery and the stirling engine together that's a great idea
Awesome video. I need to get back to my work in developing a perpetual motion machine...
Funny thing is, I had drawn up a concept for phase change energy storage back when I was in highschool 20 years ago. It was intended for rapid electrical charging though, aka lightning; figured it would be an open gate to get it struck, then it would "trip" to trap the energy in the phase change material.
I even figured out the exact material to be used, can't remember all the details, but it is/was used by a luxury car manufacturer to have a fully electronic suspension sysyem.