The ultimate Stirling engine was designed and tested by NASA, there's a very interesting video on the program in which several iterations and designs were tested in real world conditions in various trucks and cars. I did a deep dive on it after watching the video and it's a wonder they disappeared the amazing tech from the public.
❤ (UPDATE: Deadline extended until May 31!) Dear Rob, Thank you for sharing my contest and inviting your audience to it. I hope some of these people start building their own units because this is an incredibly underrated part of heat engines. I will probably expand the entry time interval soon, because it seems to be too short. I am very grateful for your contribution and I congratulate you on the new presentation space and your workshop! BLADE
Both of you are brilliant for sharing your knowledge and actually teaching others how to etc Bless Both Of You for CARING and actually SHARING what you know with others old n young alike 👍
You two are awesome, I love both your channels. The here proposed solution could be used by many many people for generate some electricity for their ligths and such. Many people choose TEG elements instead of the Stirling engine because it seems more obvious and simple, as it is solid state. This is a great example of how a Stirling solution can be just as cheap and easy.
Hearing you say "So much better since quitting smoking" in Luke's somewhat recent video made me really happy for you. Glad you're well and thanks for being exactly who you are Rob! Cheers 🎉
Yep, but they are not active now. The company changed a lot, the name and the CEO is different actually. They have no products yet we can buy. But the company is working a lot in the background. They want to show something new in 2023-2024. I'm so excited about that.
Right Rob! Thanks mate! I’m just getting into sterling engines in an attempt to assist my son with some off grid widardry for power in the middle of the desert on the southernmost end of the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, the Manzano Mountains.
I really love this concept, it´s so simple cheap and yet effective. The only improvement I would like to mention is, the lowest temp on the cold end is about 100°C due to the boiling water. It is important to get the highest temp gradient possible, especially on the cold side. Thus a better cooling solution would be needed. Something like a condenser, a water cooling AIO from a PC or something like that.
I would love to see a low cost sterling engine put into production, something that costs about the same as a lawn mower engine and is about the same size. I wanted to make a 6 cylinder alpha sterling engine out of metal using bronze electroplating because bronze can be very low friction and retains heat well. Perhaps using a steel tube for the cylinder, cast aluminum pistons, a Hemispheric head for even expansion as a prototype. I'm going to try and work on it, but if anyone else can build that concept, awesome! There are a lot of people in the rural United States that have wood boilers, solar thermal is also not too expensive, this would be a huge way to get self-sufficient electrical power in particular to everyone, but in particular places where the grid can be a little more spotty and where power outages can last for a week or more.
Great fun do you think one of your water lenses and the sun would run one of these if only I could find that damn round tuit I would be away. Many thanks
Edit: Boilers, as well as Sterling engines, are both "external combustion" engines. "They put the flame on the outside" is not what made the difference. The difference was the working fluid. Obviously, the working fluid in steam engines, is steam... more specifically, water vapor (in more efficient variants). Water can be an extremely volatile working fluid at its most efficient extremes (vapor/ice), as can exceed the design limits of the machine. The most advanced form NASA/DOE sterling engines utilized nitrogen gas in hermetically sealed circuits... making it much more friendly at its limits, as nitrogen can be easily contained in its near-critical/non-critical transient states.
A thing I've been wondering about, is if you could use the principles a heat pump to help a stirling run? As a heat pump has a coefficient of efficiency greater than 1, it seems like you could use one to take heat from the cold side, and pump it back to the hot side to maintain a better temperature difference and greatly improve the efficiency of the engine. It seems like it might be worth the energetic cost of running the compressor to recycle that heat back into the hot side of the engine.
I was thinking about your last video, where Several of us confused your use of the word Torch. I was thinking... Could you make a Electrolysis Hydrogen/Oxygen generator that runs on blowing into a tube, which generates enough hydrogen and oxygen to light a small hydrogen torch?
@@ThinkingandTinkering yeah being from America I thought we were gonna play with fire again 😂 then I remembered y'all call Flashlights torches for some reason 😅
maxwells demons -> collimator, ... saying, to optimize the engine an electronic circuit should be used to control the pressure, and point in time of turning the collimator that divides the hot and cold side of the engine. driven is the circuit by the energy produced by the engine.
Ive got the idea of having a large stirling engine, half buried in the ground in my garden. One day i will figure out how to make such an engine work with such a low temp difference.... One day
Great Videos. Not sure if anyone has tried this idea but I have wondered whether it would be possible to have a stirling engine generator where to hot side takes advantage of ground source heat and is buried, and the cold side is above ground. Should work well for winter generation if it could be implemented.
SO a Stirling engine could be used to run a generator which could drive an electric motor in an EV, A lot more range and WAY cheaper than using lithium batteries.
my only comment is an observation. I think you could setup some better lighting in your garage. ie. let's on a battery bank recharged with wind and solar. good luck with this competition I hope you get ĺoads of entries. cheers mate
Ah, the memories. Looking at those cars I was wondering if there were a way to do a solar Stirling car. Put the hot end on top in a glass box, like a solar oven in the hood (I think you call that the bonnet) and then air cool the bottom side as you drive, maybe using a few solar cells to run a fan when you're parked or in traffic.
saw your old video about the stirling engine because i was doing some research on it so i can make one. im glad your doing a new one on it. i also have an on going project on wind turbine and found that we are at the mercy of nature and geography. i think sterling is the way to go as it is power on demand. nice video/channel mate!
This is very interesting! I never heard of the Hoofler tube. When you mentioned that NASA used this device for refrigeration, I remembered, way back possibly the late 70s, an aunt and uncle had an AC that was accually gas fired. Could this be who it operated. This was like I said way back becasue I was very little then but do remember it.
Thank you. I never know that sterling engines were actually used as engines, though it seems experimentaly. Another thuoght about NASAs use of the hoffler tube for refrigeration, I have seen videos where, I guess, was used in RV (I from the US) refigerators where the frige is dual fuled. Shorepower and propane.
I love philips' mp3002ca motor. Maybe one day I'll get my hands on a clean one. I love following you. You're very good at what you do. Congratulations.
My favorite type of stirling engines is shown in your video 1698. In any case, unfortunately, it is not for generating energy for home. As example, your design: it is needed about 30-60mmHg of pressure to fill a balloon. Volume of air compressed is about 0,0003m3 per engine stroke. If engine makes 2 moves per second then you will get about 2m3 of pressurized air per hour. It means that you will get about 500J of potential energy per hour. If efficiency of engine is 1 percent then you can get 0,5J of mechanical energy (equivalently about 0,0002 Wh).
Free-Piston Stirling Engine with more power output works with 100bar of pressurized gas that requires very expensive design. Also it will consume a lot of fuel to get enough heat energy.
The USA Air Force had a working Stirling engine before the doe asked but it has never been allowed to be put into production, probably because of the Invention Secrecy Act.
Good shows. Thanks. Id like to warn you.. You will soon be banned at burning, wood, gas, or diesel fuels by the end of the year.. Need to concentrate your ideas for heating with better wind and solar.. Before you know , it will be winter again
I'm designing a Sterling-type engine that runs at very low temperature differential, high internal volume and low speed. Has anyone done anything like this before?
yes mate I read a research paper where they ran an LTD at half a degree temperature difference - I don't remember the paper but it turned up quickly in a google scholar search
A fascinating phenomenon with combustion engines is if you offset the centre of the cylinder head in relation to the centre of the crank you cause the power stroke to be larger in terms of degrees of rotation and shorten the exhaust stroke by the amount gained on the power, this is of course with a 4 stroke engine and a Stirling that rotates a crank is only 2 strokes, so we can extract more work but at the costs of some vibrations. The thing I really like about the Stirling motors is that the pistons can be made out of graphite which acts as its own lubricant inside the cylinder and if you have a long stroke and offset cylinder the side loading forces on the power stroke are reduced and since the power levels are lower than an internal combustion engine the amount of material is reduced and the types of materials don't need to be ultra processed
safest and simplest engine is the steam putt putt engine no moving parts and nothing to wear out could be used to turn a vertical spindle in a pool of water you should look at this I have built a full size one to power a 12ft dinghy but the rivers to high to test it at the moment I wonder if it will work
look at the ones by darrel foster just a tank and pipes try it with just a coil of 4mm copper pipe and it still works. blade did somthing with a diaphram putt putt and a dolphin tail that was quite interesting as well.
Allpowerlabs is a company that sells palletized wood gassifier fueled internal combustion generators. I have no idea how the company or generator are to deal with but they have been around for a while now.
Good exploration of concepts on this channel. For a while I've been wondering if Rob has implemented any of these concepts as functional day to day practical systems? If not, why not....hard to get permits or just hard to implement in a practical way?
One of the Stirling Engine Techs I am interested in is the Flat Plate Stirling Engines, which are being designed to compete head-to-head with Solar Cells.
Might it be possible to make a very low temperature stirling engine that would run off body heat by changing the type of gas on the inside of it? And by using a thermal Cline to trap the heat and make one that would run off a candle or a farm animal like a chicken or rabbit their body temperatures runaround 101 . If you were to use a larger surface to pick up the heat and turn that into a thermal Cline to capture the heat and like a battery a heat battery heat would stay put because it rises up. It would be interesting to try to make one run off your body heat while you're sleeping. Charging up your systems. The only weak point is that rubber balloon. I've seen them use ferrofluid that balloon needs to find a second option. I don't think it'll stand the test of time.
I've always thought of a sand battery with a sterling engine so use all of the salvage generators you've done to heat a sand battery then use the sterling to make the power when there is no wind sun or rain
I wonder how hard it would be to 3d print some of the more difficult parts of an alpha Stirling Engine. Pistons, head, linkage. Using standard PVC for the sides. This wouldn't be my bronze electroplated Stirling Engine 😂, but it could be an affordable Stirling engine.
@@ThinkingandTinkering I truly appreciate that, thank you! I think a lot of the files available are either the beta type sterling engines and/or use syringes has a piston and cylinder. I took a computer rated manufacturing class in high school 15 years ago, I really need to brush up on my CAD skills. It's truly amazing, when I was in Highschool between 2002 and 2006 my school spent maybe 25 thousand dollars on a robotic arm and a CNC building machine. I'm not even sure there were many good commercially available 3D printers, although we did learn that they existed. I don't know if the robotic arm is necessary anymore, but it's truly amazing that CNC milling machines of probably equal quality are available for only a couple hundred dollars. I remember having to somewhat manually program the tool paths. Your assessment of the state of 3D printing and computer aided manufacturing 10 years ago was spot on and it brought me back to using Autodesk inventor with the US version of Junkyard wars playing in the background. Keep up the good work!
Could you technically use a heated coil by running electricity through it as heat for the air to move so there's something to move the sterling engine?
@@fireballloadout Absolutely, but it depends on how much current you apply to the coil. A fun video on youtube to search for is something along the lines of "boiling ice with induction heating". Theorically, people should really be looking heavily into steam hybrid systems, because you can run steam engines/turbines/rotors now without a boiler.
What is the possibility that you could perform a specific experiment? Sterling engine powering a small A/C compressor and the low pressure and high pressure line providing the heat for the sterling cycle.
You don’t need a compressor. Use one Stirling engine to drive a second one and it will produce heat and cold as needed. Stirling refrigeration is incredibly efficient.
Looking at your balloon sterling, got me thinking, those 30gal and larger pressure tanks that work with well pumps are just a flexible membrane in a can... just larger, .. how can I use a scrap well pressure tank to scale that up to something cheap yet practical?
Hi I have made a number of Stirling engines and love them but I had the chance to buy a book in the late 1980s about a multi cylinder squish plate sterling engine that was & as far as I know is used I most submarines ( advertised in the irte or engineering council magazine) & I deeply regret not buying it. It was similar to a hydraulic hydrostat motor & it has fascinated me ever since.
I want that sterling engine from the Chevy!!! I read there was two made! Had enough torg to spin the tyres(on dirt though). It would be a bolt in replacement for my old Chevy!!!! I still have a clipping about it from a ~1985 popular mechanics ( or popular science, I forget) that I keep taped to the trunk (bonnet?) lid!
Great idea Rob that could be real good for anyone who wants to convert the heat from there wood burner to charge off grid batterys! Is there any thermoelectric devices that could sit on top of the wood burner?
The invention Stirling made was using a regenerator in a heat engine, so if you want to be very strict you could say: "It's only a Stirling engine when there is a regenerator in it.".
Sterling work rob........... 😎
lolol - nice one!
Stirling work, too!
😉
The ultimate Stirling engine was designed and tested by NASA, there's a very interesting video on the program in which several iterations and designs were tested in real world conditions in various trucks and cars. I did a deep dive on it after watching the video and it's a wonder they disappeared the amazing tech from the public.
thanks for following that through mate - it is an awesome tech
❤ (UPDATE: Deadline extended until May 31!) Dear Rob, Thank you for sharing my contest and inviting your audience to it. I hope some of these people start building their own units because this is an incredibly underrated part of heat engines. I will probably expand the entry time interval soon, because it seems to be too short. I am very grateful for your contribution and I congratulate you on the new presentation space and your workshop! BLADE
my pleasure mate - if you extend it i will certainly do an entry - it is a bit soon for me to get something done too
Both of you are brilliant for sharing your knowledge and actually teaching others how to etc Bless Both Of You for CARING and actually SHARING what you know with others old n young alike 👍
@@ThinkingandTinkering Deadline extended until May 31. because I've got lots of reaction about the short deadline. Thanks to your support Rob, again!
@Jon Doe Thanks Jon! 🙏👏 BLADE
You two are awesome, I love both your channels. The here proposed solution could be used by many many people for generate some electricity for their ligths and such. Many people choose TEG elements instead of the Stirling engine because it seems more obvious and simple, as it is solid state. This is a great example of how a Stirling solution can be just as cheap and easy.
I am so glad you included the Philips its an amazing machine ever it has not that much recognition or love.
i wish i could get hold of one
Found it. blade attila
awesome mate
Hearing you say "So much better since quitting smoking" in Luke's somewhat recent video made me really happy for you. Glad you're well and thanks for being exactly who you are Rob! Cheers 🎉
What's Luke's channel? I heard he was building a yurt and I live in one.
@@austinjohnson4890 "Thinking n Tinkering"
cheers mate and you too - all the best
Most impressive stirling engine is Sun Pulse 500 by Sun Orbit. It's on youtbe. I would love to be able to build one of those .
seen it mate - hmmm - i may try it
Yep, but they are not active now. The company changed a lot, the name and the CEO is different actually. They have no products yet we can buy. But the company is working a lot in the background. They want to show something new in 2023-2024. I'm so excited about that.
Right Rob! Thanks mate! I’m just getting into sterling engines in an attempt to assist my son with some off grid widardry for power in the middle of the desert on the southernmost end of the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, the Manzano Mountains.
what a cool place to live - no pun intended lol
Still trying to find a video of yours I don’t like. No fear the search will continue! 😉
lol - i must try harder mate - cheers
Lookin' forward to the "mag - thing" and how big can U make it?
i dunno - i will have to see!
YOU ALWAYS HAVE ANOTHER VIDEO!!!! I can not believe how much high quality content you've put out. You're an absolute treasure!
I really love this concept, it´s so simple cheap and yet effective.
The only improvement I would like to mention is, the lowest temp on the cold end is about 100°C due to the boiling water. It is important to get the highest temp gradient possible, especially on the cold side. Thus a better cooling solution would be needed. Something like a condenser, a water cooling AIO from a PC or something like that.
I would love to see a low cost sterling engine put into production, something that costs about the same as a lawn mower engine and is about the same size.
I wanted to make a 6 cylinder alpha sterling engine out of metal using bronze electroplating because bronze can be very low friction and retains heat well. Perhaps using a steel tube for the cylinder, cast aluminum pistons, a Hemispheric head for even expansion as a prototype. I'm going to try and work on it, but if anyone else can build that concept, awesome!
There are a lot of people in the rural United States that have wood boilers, solar thermal is also not too expensive, this would be a huge way to get self-sufficient electrical power in particular to everyone, but in particular places where the grid can be a little more spotty and where power outages can last for a week or more.
they are starting to make them for CHP systems but they are still expensive
Great fun do you think one of your water lenses and the sun would run one of these if only I could find that damn round tuit I would be away. Many thanks
lol - yes mate i think it would
Edit: Boilers, as well as Sterling engines, are both "external combustion" engines. "They put the flame on the outside" is not what made the difference. The difference was the working fluid. Obviously, the working fluid in steam engines, is steam... more specifically, water vapor (in more efficient variants). Water can be an extremely volatile working fluid at its most efficient extremes (vapor/ice), as can exceed the design limits of the machine. The most advanced form NASA/DOE sterling engines utilized nitrogen gas in hermetically sealed circuits... making it much more friendly at its limits, as nitrogen can be easily contained in its near-critical/non-critical transient states.
A thing I've been wondering about, is if you could use the principles a heat pump to help a stirling run? As a heat pump has a coefficient of efficiency greater than 1, it seems like you could use one to take heat from the cold side, and pump it back to the hot side to maintain a better temperature difference and greatly improve the efficiency of the engine. It seems like it might be worth the energetic cost of running the compressor to recycle that heat back into the hot side of the engine.
it could be done mate
By the way, Stirling engines are prior to Otto cycle engines. I really love Stirling
a stirling engine was installed in an 1979 amc spirit gt in a feasibility study back in the day...fun fact..chek out the 😊1979 pop science issue
I was thinking about your last video, where Several of us confused your use of the word Torch. I was thinking... Could you make a Electrolysis Hydrogen/Oxygen generator that runs on blowing into a tube, which generates enough hydrogen and oxygen to light a small hydrogen torch?
i have done it already
@@ThinkingandTinkering yeah being from America I thought we were gonna play with fire again 😂 then I remembered y'all call Flashlights torches for some reason 😅
@@ThinkingandTinkering Really? did you make a video?
@@ThinkingandTinkering I have a super cool idea for this ooo 😀
I believe I’ve figured out how to make a Stirling Engine with 100% efficiency
Thanks for the pointer Rob. You mentioned his channel before. I subscribed
maxwells demons -> collimator, ... saying, to optimize the engine an electronic circuit should be used to control the pressure, and point in time of turning the collimator that divides the hot and cold side of the engine.
driven is the circuit by the energy produced by the engine.
Ive got the idea of having a large stirling engine, half buried in the ground in my garden.
One day i will figure out how to make such an engine work with such a low temp difference.... One day
Thank you Robert for notifying us of blades channel. Truly you are a blessing to everyone.
Great Videos. Not sure if anyone has tried this idea but I have wondered whether it would be possible to have a stirling engine generator where to hot side takes advantage of ground source heat and is buried, and the cold side is above ground. Should work well for winter generation if it could be implemented.
SO a Stirling engine could be used to run a generator which could drive an electric motor in an EV, A lot more range and WAY cheaper than using lithium batteries.
my only comment is an observation.
I think you could setup some better lighting in your garage. ie. let's on a battery bank recharged with wind and solar. good luck with this competition I hope you get ĺoads of entries. cheers mate
Ah, the memories.
Looking at those cars I was wondering if there were a way to do a solar Stirling car. Put the hot end on top in a glass box, like a solar oven in the hood (I think you call that the bonnet) and then air cool the bottom side as you drive, maybe using a few solar cells to run a fan when you're parked or in traffic.
interesting idea mate thanks for sharing
saw your old video about the stirling engine because i was doing some research on it so i can make one. im glad your doing a new one on it. i also have an on going project on wind turbine and found that we are at the mercy of nature and geography. i think sterling is the way to go as it is power on demand. nice video/channel mate!
it would be great to combine with heating!
I had thought of using something like thermoacustic tubes to run a turbine.
i like that mate
Show me a self starting Stirling and I'll be sold
Power it with solar you can't lose
This is very interesting! I never heard of the Hoofler tube. When you mentioned that NASA used this device for refrigeration, I remembered, way back possibly the late 70s, an aunt and uncle had an AC that was accually gas fired. Could this be who it operated. This was like I said way back becasue I was very little then but do remember it.
I don't know mate - I will have to have a look into it
Thank you. I never know that sterling engines were actually used as engines, though it seems experimentaly. Another thuoght about NASAs use of the hoffler tube for refrigeration, I have seen videos where, I guess, was used in RV (I from the US) refigerators where the frige is dual fuled. Shorepower and propane.
Go on take some time out have some fun enter the competition it'll be awesome
Do u know of any plans for the bigger ones like in the car?
Talkin' 'bout my generation.
I have tried to search Blade's World on yt but haven't found his channel yet
search "Blade Attila"
his channel is linked at the end of this video and a link is given in the description mate
I love philips' mp3002ca motor. Maybe one day I'll get my hands on a clean one.
I love following you. You're very good at what you do. Congratulations.
I would love to get hold of one too - or a least the tech specs but I have searched and I can't find them
@@ThinkingandTinkering I hope you find it and analyse it for us.
My favorite type of stirling engines is shown in your video 1698. In any case, unfortunately, it is not for generating energy for home.
As example, your design: it is needed about 30-60mmHg of pressure to fill a balloon. Volume of air compressed is about 0,0003m3 per engine stroke. If engine makes 2 moves per second then you will get about 2m3 of pressurized air per hour. It means that you will get about 500J of potential energy per hour. If efficiency of engine is 1 percent then you can get 0,5J of mechanical energy (equivalently about 0,0002 Wh).
Free-Piston Stirling Engine with more power output works with 100bar of pressurized gas that requires very expensive design. Also it will consume a lot of fuel to get enough heat energy.
Sorry Rob.... I'm quite the irregular regular of the channel 😂
lol - no worries mate
The USA Air Force had a working Stirling engine before the doe asked but it has never been allowed to be put into production, probably because of the Invention Secrecy Act.
probably
Good shows. Thanks. Id like to warn you.. You will soon be banned at burning, wood, gas, or diesel fuels by the end of the year.. Need to concentrate your ideas for heating with better wind and solar.. Before you know , it will be winter again
I know it is the eco guard regulations - but thanks for the warning
I'm designing a Sterling-type engine that runs at very low temperature differential, high internal volume and low speed. Has anyone done anything like this before?
yes mate I read a research paper where they ran an LTD at half a degree temperature difference - I don't remember the paper but it turned up quickly in a google scholar search
The part with the Huffler tube is a late April fools joke. I couldn't hear the description.
it's a small section of the original video - see the original video if you want detail
A fascinating phenomenon with combustion engines is if you offset the centre of the cylinder head in relation to the centre of the crank you cause the power stroke to be larger in terms of degrees of rotation and shorten the exhaust stroke by the amount gained on the power, this is of course with a 4 stroke engine and a Stirling that rotates a crank is only 2 strokes, so we can extract more work but at the costs of some vibrations.
The thing I really like about the Stirling motors is that the pistons can be made out of graphite which acts as its own lubricant inside the cylinder and if you have a long stroke and offset cylinder the side loading forces on the power stroke are reduced and since the power levels are lower than an internal combustion engine the amount of material is reduced and the types of materials don't need to be ultra processed
in engineering terms it is certainly much easier to machine
Hmmm. Sterling engine using solar power????
done it
I have heard you talk about balde but had no idea where to find him. Thank you for the like.
cheers mate
MAZDA HAD ON IN A SEDAN in the 90s?. IT WAS A ROCKET
cool
safest and simplest engine is the steam putt putt engine no moving parts and nothing to wear out could be used to turn a vertical spindle in a pool of water you should look at this I have built a full size one to power a 12ft dinghy but the rivers to high to test it at the moment I wonder if it will work
I thought it had a moving part - isn't the case also a diaphragm?
look at the ones by darrel foster just a tank and pipes try it with just a coil of 4mm copper pipe and it still works.
blade did somthing with a diaphram putt putt and a dolphin tail that was quite interesting as well.
Still looking for crystal salt or THC energy 😊
ok
Hey you should pin the link to his channel in the comment section
I know - I just don't know how to lol
I comment whenever allowed. Love it
awesome mate lol
Why cant you buy a wood fired power generator. Or bio diesel one. The fire could run a steam engine or sterling.
Allpowerlabs is a company that sells palletized wood gassifier fueled internal combustion generators. I have no idea how the company or generator are to deal with but they have been around for a while now.
you can
make a stringing engine bicycle
nice
Good exploration of concepts on this channel. For a while I've been wondering if Rob has implemented any of these concepts as functional day to day practical systems? If not, why not....hard to get permits or just hard to implement in a practical way?
permits are always a pain mate but here we really just explore concepts
Stirling sir ❤️👍
lol - awesome mate
Once again linear into circular momentum loss. Thinking about combining with a mass flywheel (old train wheel would do lol)
cheers mate
One of the Stirling Engine Techs I am interested in is the Flat Plate Stirling Engines, which are being designed to compete head-to-head with Solar Cells.
they are really just big LTD engines mate
Might it be possible to make a very low temperature stirling engine that would run off body heat by changing the type of gas on the inside of it? And by using a thermal Cline to trap the heat and make one that would run off a candle or a farm animal like a chicken or rabbit their body temperatures runaround 101 . If you were to use a larger surface to pick up the heat and turn that into a thermal Cline to capture the heat and like a battery a heat battery heat would stay put because it rises up. It would be interesting to try to make one run off your body heat while you're sleeping. Charging up your systems. The only weak point is that rubber balloon. I've seen them use ferrofluid that balloon needs to find a second option. I don't think it'll stand the test of time.
yes I read of an engine running on half a degree temperature difference
I've always thought of a sand battery with a sterling engine so use all of the salvage generators you've done to heat a sand battery then use the sterling to make the power when there is no wind sun or rain
I like that mate - thanks for sharing
I wonder how hard it would be to 3d print some of the more difficult parts of an alpha Stirling Engine. Pistons, head, linkage.
Using standard PVC for the sides.
This wouldn't be my bronze electroplated Stirling Engine 😂, but it could be an affordable Stirling engine.
there are quite a few on thingiverse
@@ThinkingandTinkering I truly appreciate that, thank you! I think a lot of the files available are either the beta type sterling engines and/or use syringes has a piston and cylinder.
I took a computer rated manufacturing class in high school 15 years ago, I really need to brush up on my CAD skills.
It's truly amazing, when I was in Highschool between 2002 and 2006 my school spent maybe 25 thousand dollars on a robotic arm and a CNC building machine. I'm not even sure there were many good commercially available 3D printers, although we did learn that they existed.
I don't know if the robotic arm is necessary anymore, but it's truly amazing that CNC milling machines of probably equal quality are available for only a couple hundred dollars.
I remember having to somewhat manually program the tool paths.
Your assessment of the state of 3D printing and computer aided manufacturing 10 years ago was spot on and it brought me back to using Autodesk inventor with the US version of Junkyard wars playing in the background.
Keep up the good work!
Could you technically use a heated coil by running electricity through it as heat for the air to move so there's something to move the sterling engine?
Yes, you can use an induction coil for heating.
yes
@@samuelthomasengardio is it any good?
@@fireballloadout Absolutely, but it depends on how much current you apply to the coil. A fun video on youtube to search for is something along the lines of "boiling ice with induction heating". Theorically, people should really be looking heavily into steam hybrid systems, because you can run steam engines/turbines/rotors now without a boiler.
What is the possibility that you could perform a specific experiment?
Sterling engine powering a small A/C compressor and the low pressure and high pressure line providing the heat for the sterling cycle.
You don’t need a compressor. Use one Stirling engine to drive a second one and it will produce heat and cold as needed. Stirling refrigeration is incredibly efficient.
go for it
Looking at your balloon sterling, got me thinking, those 30gal and larger pressure tanks that work with well pumps are just a flexible membrane in a can... just larger,
.. how can I use a scrap well pressure tank to scale that up to something cheap yet practical?
you are talking about accumulators?
@@ThinkingandTinkering diaphragm tanks , I don't know what they're called over there..
Hi I have made a number of Stirling engines and love them but I had the chance to buy a book in the late 1980s about a multi cylinder squish plate sterling engine that was & as far as I know is used I most submarines ( advertised in the irte or engineering council magazine) & I deeply regret not buying it. It was similar to a hydraulic hydrostat motor & it has fascinated me ever since.
you should have let impulse govern that one mate - I hate to say this but chances are it will be ages before you stumble across that book again!
@@ThinkingandTinkering hi I have been trying to get a copy of the book ever since 😭
0:36 1989?😅
busy mind odd things slip by me
@@ThinkingandTinkering No worries. Just here to help?
Lmao
I want that sterling engine from the Chevy!!!
I read there was two made! Had enough torg to spin the tyres(on dirt though). It would be a bolt in replacement for my old Chevy!!!! I still have a clipping about it from a ~1985 popular mechanics ( or popular science, I forget) that I keep taped to the trunk (bonnet?) lid!
You were close,in Britain boot=trunk and bonnet=hood.
@@ravenmad9225 is it tires or tyres? Or am I thinking of India?
it would be awesome to have lol
Cool
cheers mate
Great idea Rob that could be real good for anyone who wants to convert the heat from there wood burner to charge off grid batterys! Is there any thermoelectric devices that could sit on top of the wood burner?
I have done videos on that topic mate
@@ThinkingandTinkering thank you Rob, I'll check them out!
I like the Manson engine.
the manson-guise is better in my opinion mate
@@ThinkingandTinkering Really? I'll have to look that one up. Never heard of it.
Can we really call all these heat engines "Stirling engines"?
yes
Stirling engines all work by heating and cooling air. These engines may look pretty different but that's the principle behind every one.
The invention Stirling made was using a regenerator in a heat engine, so if you want to be very strict you could say: "It's only a Stirling engine when there is a regenerator in it.".
👍🙏
cheers mate