With all this peak oil and end of the world and the energy shortage and all that stuff... why doesn't anyone build Stirling external combustion engines?
They were once used for pumps and the like.
This fellow here rebuilt a Rider-Ericsson Engine. Looks like he got it to work.
There was a modern project to provide power in India. It went nowhere.
You can buy model kits. (Click Here)
There are websites... (Click Here)
I was reading about steam power and wood gas.
Yes, I just found the latest copy of "Farm Show Show Magazine," (I always like to see what I can build with our collection of White Combines.)
There is a fellow with a steam-powered generator that he will sell you for $35,000. www.steamgen.info
But steam is messy and dangerous.
A stirling engine could run off waste heat or could be part of a heating system as they require a heat differential to run. There seems to be little practical information on them. How much of a heat differential?
There are those really cool fans that sit on top of a wood stove. Why not on a larger scale?
If I won the lottery to the tune of 5 million dollars there are things I would do!
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One of the problems with a Stirling engine is that the tolerances have to be very close to prevent gas escape as they are a closed system. The other is or maybe was, that the hot end lacked a good enough metal to hold up to the constant heating and cooling cycles. When steam came along, the Stirling was dropped. I have a friend that built an closed cycle differential temperature engine that uses propane. The propane heats up in the sun, flows to another tank, which shifts the weight and rocks a lever which turns a great , heavy, antique , one ton flywheel . This is hooked to a generator. It works very well! The idea has been around a long time, but nobody liked the idea of using propane. I'm sure there are safer gasses around, but I suppose propane is cheapest for him.
ReplyDeleteI think I may have come up with a better idea for power in the winter. The Lazy-Farm Employee almost perpetual motion machine...
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