Well, you know what's better than 100 politicians? 10 politicians. So that's not a high bar you've set, but I agree that this is what improvement of Stirling engines need!
This is the best stirling engine I've ever seen, hands down. I hope you get this design to market. Such a compact and efficient engine would be perfect for a hybred electric vehicle like a motorcycle or scooter. Compatibility with multiple heat sources would give this an advantage as well. Maybe a multi fuel compressed air powered burner or gasifier for use in rural or off-grid areas as a generator. I'll be keeping a close eye on this and wishing you the best of luck! Excellent work!
Eeeeeh a turbine would be probably better for a hybrid car, while a stiling engine is pretty good a turbine is more efficient, smaller and also multi fuel.
@@drdoofenshootz7 The Stirling has a way too low weight to performance ratio which is important in mobility applications. It´s also not cheaper than a turbine generally speaking depending on the design and many other factors. As I have already said a small turbine is more power dens, it´s lighter smaller is not as expensive and is just as reliable. But in the end it depends on many factors. Honestly I would test both and compare the two.
I think the RV market would love this. Many campgrounds do not permit generators to run after certain hours. This may solve that problem. I really appreciate the verbal discussion. I’ve watched dozens of Stirling engine videos and 95% have no useful audio. Sure i learned from those mimed videos, but so much more information can be gleaned from the spoken word.
That's a great point, I hadn't thought of that before. An RV would definitely benefit from this. Even if a conventional generator was three times more efficient at producing watts per fuel consumed, this could be an additional power source that ran silently when needed.
I was just reading the February 1948 issue of popular science and there is a great article in there about the 4 cylinder philips hot air engine . Then I started looking online for more info and came across your channel . I am very impressed with your design and look forward to seeeing more !
Thank you for taking the time and effort to post this. You've clearly put a lot of time and effort into it, and by sharing this you are answering many questions that capable DIY builders have. I would be very interested in something like this that is optimized to run on wood-gas, and the generator is wound to produce 48V, as a back-up to a wind/solar off-grid electrical system. I cannot make propane at a remote cabin, but I can make wood-gas if I have plenty of trees.
What a beautiful piece of engineering. You were talking about application as an (approx) 750w generator, i just wanted to give you an idea where i think a production version of this would excell greatly if it can be made at a similar price to a conventional 1000w invertor generator. I live on a boat and many others use boats for a hobby, when we moor we currently have only solar or a piston generator to maintain batteries and provide mains power. Running an invertor generator is too loud for long periods when other people are nearby. The boat environment means there is an unlimited supply of cooling water for the cold side, it merely needs a hose to pull water from the river and a suitable pump (maybe crank driven). If this device can be made compact enough to be lifted from a locker and placed on the bank by one person then i believe if it is powerfull enough to drive the multiphase alternator from an invertor generator which is then converted to high-voltage DC and back to 50hz A/C via the standard invertor gen electronics then i believe you have found your market. Quite running is essential in this environment and also due to fuel availability on the river bank a burner which can be powered by diesel or kerrosene would make this extremely desirable to boat owners. The most popular conventional generator used in this consumer group is the honda eu1000i and the 750 variant. These produce 1000w and 750w respectively and are regulated via the invertor technology meaning a stable set speed rpm is not necassary since the conversion between dc and ac takes care of these parameters. The 750w varient for example does not use variable speed control only 2 speed settings for 300w and 750w output selection, it seems a perfect match for the claimed power of your machine. The piston engine used in an invertor generator is a 60cc 4 stroke which i believe is rated at approx 1hp. I personally would love to see a device like yours come into fruition since the exhaust from a burner could even allow it to be fitted inside the boat with a thru hull exhaust similar to a diesel heater. Hope these ideas lead to something great! Mat.
This is the best design of a Stirling engine that I have ever seen. Great attention have been given to the displacer side where the heat capturing/ transfer side is beautifully made while the cold side is nicely finned and the ends could be more streamlined at the entry and exit points for better dynamic flow. In order for the Stirling engine to be efficient, most of the heat from the source must go through the piston to the cold end, in that when there is the compression due to the air being heated, then the power piston expand robbing heat from the compressed heated air which would cool down and lose pressure. The heat lost that does not go through the power piston is that which goes through the cylinder walls of the displacer. IN this particular engine extreme care was taken to isolate this heat lost through using heat resisting material between the hot end , the regenerator and the cold end touching the crankcase and I would say that there exists the success of this particular engine. I often question another issue in the Stirling engine and wish readers would consider this . When the air is at the hot end, where it acquires heat energy hence pressure, then a little later there is the expansion of the power piston, acquiring power, which cools the hot air down due to the expansion and after this there is an interesting issue where some of the hot air that lost temperature due to the expanding piston will have to be transferred to the cool side through the hot end so before some of the relatively hot air cools down, it is required to heat up again momentarily thus cooling the hot end. This energy does not go through the piston! I have to rethink this situation as there could be some benefit if the hot air is passed to the cool side through another path other than the hot end. Please note that this is still a postulate and introducing another path for the hot air to go to the cold end might deserve some more thinking.
Thanks for the excellent video and break down, I'm just starting to learn about these and have been discouraged by the lack of information I can find about a practical build. I'm looking forward to seeing an update!
thank you for your presentation and demonstration for your stirling engine. it was worth to watch :) i think size of the engine and its power production is practical for green energy usage. idea to use existing compressor parts to start project was great and speeds up development. for data point view i would like to see some meters for rpm, temperatures and power pruduction etc. For further use version with solar power source would be interesting.
Speaking of green energy, Colin Furz created a wood gas unit that powered his lawnmower. If you can replace the propane with wood gas you have a truly green but still gas-powered sterling engine, with minimal changes to engine design. Really, you would just be connecting the line to a wood gas producer instead of a propane bottle. ruclips.net/video/FK2qK-NCQH8/видео.html
The foil regenerator is one of the most important parts for a stirling engine, and the trick with the ouncturing wheel for uniform spacing is genius, thank you. My question here would only be, how do you make sure that the displacer does not touch the foil ? Or does it slightly touch it on the bumps ?
Hi, have you tried burning wood in a rocketstove as a heatsource? The heat in the afterburnchamber can reach as high as 1000°C. The benefit is that you don't have any pollution of any kind.
Very impressive work; and good scientific explanation. It sure sounds nice. One question; when operating the engine with varying loads; how is a Stirling engine governed / throttled? It seems this engine runs at a nice, steady speed with only the waterpump as an electrical load. How does the system maintain stable operating speed with varying loads? I'm familiar with internal combustion engines where they vary the heat added to each compressed air charge; or vary the density of the charge; just curious how the Stirling cycle is regulated. Thanks!
Impressive! I did some research on old sterling engines and this is what I find the most amusing- I read from wikapedia about the third made working sterling engine ever made. James Sterling made it for a foundry, as a water pump. The engine worked, only 40 rpm, but apparently had amazing power, with a 12 inch wide cylinder bore! It had 700,000 pounds of pressure and was a wapping 21 horsepower engine! The first Stirling engine made was used for a quarry until unfortunately became overheated. even though it was rated at only 21 hp, this is actual HP and not just peak hp like Briggs and stratton does, take the muffler and air filter off and say it's 18hp, when in reality it's probably just 16hp. So when a Stirling engine is only 40 rpm, that seems lame compared to today's standards, but in reality that also means that the torque much stronger than what a 21 hp engine would be from a small engine, I didn't find a torque unfortunately, but it lifted a few tons of rocks. it must have been pretty strong, stronger than a steam engine possibly.
There's a nice moving diagram that shows the operating movement of the sterling engine. Or just sterling engine or Ericsson hot air engine in your browser searchbar to see images of these amazing engines. Also there's three hot air engines in the steam engine section of the National museum of American history. In Washington DC of course.
@sourand jaded Sterling engines are real; I have a small model that works, but Sterling engines have to be perfectly timed or something. Otherwise, they stop spinning, if you know how a A/C pump works that's basically what a Sterling engine is. It uses the hot to cold difference in temperature to make an expansion of air, like an explosion. I won't say that Wikipedia is exactly a good area to look for everything. Information is not always correctly put in words. Yeah, a wood gas engine is pretty cool, but that's an entirely different engine, not very comparable.
@sourand jaded The thing is, even if I can find books that give me information, you're never going to find books that old that a library will even let you touch, I have tried looking for historical musical instruments, and they just won't let you touch anything valuable, those fools, there are amazing reed organs that people treat like trash, and I wanted to find them in museums, but they just don't care about keeping that history alive.
I have a question if you have the time to consider it, would there be an advantage to attaching a small compressor to chill water going into the cold side? The purpose of this would be to allow the engine to run with a smaller temprature difference at the expense of thermal efficiancy for use in heat reclemation and solar applications allowing it to run in less ideal conditions
una pregunta si se aumenta la presión interior del gas por ejemplo a 100 bares si aumentaría su producción a kilovatios?? otra pregunta cual de los dos gases para un motor Stirling es mejor usar: si nitrógeno o helio y por que?? te quiero dar muchas gracias con este video me pareció fabulosos me sacase de varias dudas que tenia, estas eran teóricas. te agradezco por compartir esta gran información a las personas que le llaman mucho la atención este tipo de motores Dios te bendiga y sigue compartiendo mas de este tipoi de contenido
Great video! I'm impressed by the attention to details you've put into that Stirling engine! I really like to see attempt at pressurized chamber - this proportionally increases the work that the engine can produce, and is imho the only way to proper Stirling engine. However I don't like the use of air (or Nitrogen) as it has about 5 times lower thermal conductivity of Helium (and almost 7 times that of Hydrogen). At ~6 bars you're just compensating the low thermal conductivity of Nitrogen, and to do more work a Stirling engine should operate at high pressures with high thermal conductivity gas. In a video of Philips Stirling Cryogenics they're using 100 bars. Of course leaks would be the main challenge with pressurized Hydrogen or Helium, but imho it's the way to go. I'm not engineer and not familiar with the challenge of isolating a piston from leaks of pressurized H or He, but I guess if nothing else a magnetic piston can be used over the wall of the cylinder to ensure zero change for the gas to escape (I guess at 0% leaks even Hydrogen would be safe, as it's exactly the leaks of H that create the main danger). Another thing that you can improve or at least switch to greener alternative is the heat source. As you know Stirling engine has nothing to do with combustion at all, it's just the easiest way to deliver heat. But 600°C you can make a simple mirrors (or perhaps Fresnel lens) structure to capture and concentrate sunlight to the Hot tank. By the way if using sunlight you might want to put the Hot tank under glass cover, to ensure that the high frequency light waves pass thru, but that the infra-red waves of the generated heat can't penetrate back from the inside and escape. Actually as you know temp. difference is critical for the Stirling engine efficiency, so going over 600°C would help greatly, and shouldn't be difficult - just concentrate more sunlight (or btw most gas torches can easily reach 1200~1400°C). Lowering the Cold tank temp is also very important 100°C is rather high. Actually for the same temp.diff. if it's closer to the absolute 0°K the better your engine efficiency will be. At 100°C Cold & 600°C Hot tanks you'll be limited to about 57% max. theoretical efficiency (if you can reach higher 30-ies % in real world efficiency would be already great achievement and probably impossible to improve without major redesign). But if you can take the Cold tank temp to 20°C with the same 500°C difference you'll get 6% higher efficiency (potentially 3-4% real world eff.) ... to the 600°C you're working with you'll get 6% more max.eff. and if you can deliver ~1200°C of a gas torch you can reach up to 80% max.eff. (ie that could translate to about 40 to 53% real world eff.) I'm greatly impressed by your effort to minimize the noise and wear'n'tear! From what I can tell about half the noise was produced by the burning fuel (which replaced by CSP can eliminate it). Perhaps designing the Hot tank to switch between fossil fuel burner and a CSP during the day would be very convenient as a generator usage. Btw for a better solar power receiver I would paint the fins around the Hot tank in something like Vanta black and put a glass container around it (ideally closed to avoid loss of heat by escaping hot air). This way the black surface would absorb the sunlight faster, and the glass cover would trap the produced infra-red waves inside (actually a double layered glass cover would be ideal as the vacuum between the two layers would reduce greatly the heat loss thru conduction). Roughly speaking given that average solar radiation is about 1000W/m², if you can capture 80% of it and turn half of it into usable energy, you'll be doing great! (Twice as good as PV panels!) I know that as a car engine a Stirling won't be a good solution (at least not competitive to the existing ones), because Stirling engine lacks torque, and high efficiency and safety can be a challenge in a restricted space of a car. But a stationary solar energy harvester imo Stirling engine can do amazing, and you'd like you can charge your EV with some of that energy and still drive at very low expense and cleanly (and preferably with cheaper cars ones battery prices come down). If a CSP system is scaled up enough you can use part of the harvested energy to store it in Cryo Cold tanks (perhaps in the form of liquid air with appropriate insulation of course) btw Stirling engines make great cryo heat pump too! And later when the sun is out you can use the stored temp. diff. (to the outside env. temp, or a gas operated Hot tank) to convert it back to electricity with great efficiency (~73% for -196° & 16°C, or even 91% for -196°C and 600°C burner)
Would the heat outlet on top of the burner be better if it was smaller contains more heat and in turn the burner could be turned down saving on gas use
If I could design one from the ground up I would make it a 6 cylinder with a hot plate to hook up to wood fired stoves for off grid usage and then whatever the efficiency of the engine the rest is used for heating. I would hope for the 6-cylinder arrangement to keep it in even more balance for silent operation. For the cooling side a liquid cooling tower would be used with at least 500 liters of water and connections to replace that water and put the war water into a hot water tank inside a house. I imagine doing this once a day would be done even in Spring and Autumn. Even if this is not done the mass of the water keep at least one room warm for the night. Or you could cycle the water to different water tanks around the house or property. I would make it open to and put a gauge in there and you would have to cycle it manually. But just in case you did put steaming hot water in a system, the other tanks would also be open containers. For the final use it would of course be hooked up to an AC motor for generating AC into a hybrid charge controller for the house. I imagine in 50 years this sort of system being the ultimate in home heating, water and electricity. With a good, solidly built electrical system these would eliminate the need for things such as grid power in many rural areas where it is barely sustainable to get it there as well as big construction projects. I sure would hope to have this system in my home one day alas I do not have the funding to go through with an undertaking as such. Thank you for posting this online Mr. Kirk and for the clear explanations and the open information you have provided. I wish you all the best.
It is a clever bit to use propane as the fuel and then run the water cooling around that tank. Like a can of dust off becomes ice cold as you let the compressed air out there is a temperature pressure co-relation and as you release propane there is a cooling effect taking place on the gas inside which you can borrow with water to make the heat dissipation better. What I think myself and a lot of people would also be interested in is a heater input similar to what is used on the big stirlings in India. It is like a boiler that they start a fire in and when it gets hot enough they put the head of their Stirling into the perfectly fitting window of the boiler and they get several hours of use out of it before they have to tend to the fire again or add fuel ( which can be done from the top while the window is occupied with the stirling ) Not that propane fuel isn't more efficient, easy enough to get, cheap and reliable and can provide some extra cooling. But it would be awesome is if you had a generator that you could power with a campfire or have the option to use a special made boiler or LPG.
Congratulation on this sensationally beautiful prototype. However, I had the impression that a Sterling engine was meant to run on any "waste heat." Would that be true? Therefore, what minimum heat intensity is required to bring about the "Stirling effect?" Also, I am truly sorry for your friend's early death as your mentor and helper in the construction of this best ever Stirling Engine I saw.
have you tried n enclosed heater part? like n insulated container for the burner to keep as much heat as possible? maybe use a small engine fuel injector?
It's very nice. How well does it hold its charge for? Is it powerful enough to have a little air pump? How well does it run under load and such? As it is it is very beautiful
Dear Mr kirkolator; I have a couple ideas for you, most likely you already thought of them but hey I might look at it differently and see something you didn't. 1) instead of running an external flywheel use an aluminum casing covering where the flywheel and generator pulley shaft should be and internally install a flywheel with embedded magnets with windings fastened inside the casing to keep the shaft seal leakage minimized since you could start rotation by stimulating the coils, then once running the windings will act as an ac generator, not optimal in motor mode but it is only need for a few rotations. 2)use a catalytic material in your exhaust to get the most out of your energy input (along with insulation) 3) use a dual fuel set up, propane to preheat head then once hot use a diverter valve to transfer to kerosene using the pressure from the propane to feed the fuel. kerosene has higher specific energy and is cheaper. I would love to have something like this to work on...
So if the heat source was a hot plate, and that was powered by 100 watt solar panel and couple batteries, then could this stifling engine turn a propeller, in Chris craft mahogany runabout, if so, at what knots?
I've always wandered if a Sterling could use an ammonia/water base for the heat transfer cycle. There would be corrosion issues. You would need to add a condensing coil, a condensation separation tank, a separation condensing coil and simple one way flow valves. But the expansion rate would be massive up next to anything ever put in a Sterling. And it could double as the cooling system. It would be a closed loop Sterling Steam engine. Then use a Fresnel lens to power it.
I think there is still much improvement that could be made. 1. There is no insulation and heat transfer between the new and burned air in the burner, much of the heat escapes unhindered through the opening. 2. Free piston design would probably have less friction. 3. What kind of generator is being used ? A stepper motor or a brushless motor / generator would be best. 4. Is there no battery to be charged ? 5. The engine should work much better with pressurized helium. Also why an alpha configuration in the first place ? In this case, because most components are already build and can be picked off the shelf, but for a dedicated stirling type engine a Gamma or Beta or even free piston or even more modern a Thermoacoustic type engine would be much much simpler and cheaper. A thermoscoustic type engine for example does not have any moving parts besides the membrane which replaces the power piston. No small tolerances and machining needed at all. Bot the displacer piston and the working piston are made out of air so to speak, which is the cheapest and least machining needed part that can be. This engine here is very nice, very well build but why is this 70 year old design used ? Why nothing new ? We can build much better machines in the mean time. For instance we can 3D print metal parts and optimize for strength weight and surface area in the burned for instance. Even the 70 year old Philips design used Beta Stirling configuration. This is the part that keeps annoying me, all this time spend for this old design, why not a free piston stirling or thermoacoustic ? I have build one out of dog food cans and I can trickle charge my phone with it. I didn´t use any type of machining, just some cans, steel wool, insulation material, rubber membranes, magnets and a 3D printed spool holder + copper wire and full bridge rectifier. Given proper engineering and materials the engine could be improved tenfold.
I think I could do has everything to make a 5kw generator motor? If you want to place an order and buy it, what cost would it have, if it would be possible to place an order
Hi, would adapting the burner used by eberspacher diesel heater be of use for a regulated heat source. I am designing a vessel that would very much be able to make use of 500 watts at 12v and be quite. Incorporated with solar and lithium batteries. Best of luck and love your work. Regards Pieter from New Zealand.
I note that you are using propane as a fuel. I wonder the ease of attaching 'a line' or connector to allow a biomass burner as an alternative fuel. Why? I's like to mount the unit in a campervan and collect biomass as I travel around Australia. Ideally, I'd like to capture 'solar', 'biomass' as well as shore power as options, for feeding into primary vehicle and secondary lifestyle batteries, but heat recovery is also useful as hot water.
Thanks for the video. Keep the pressure on. I don't who killed sterling engines. There should be a lot more sterlings around than there are today. I would love to see a giant scale engine (the size of a cruze ship deisile engine) generating electricity from solar or geothermal heat.
Okay, hate to Burst your Stirling Bubble, but Coleman Beat you to it. 50 Years ago, I was staying at a Boys Scott Camp. At that time I was in the Cub Scotts. I stayed in a Cabin with I guess, about 20 or so other Scotts. There was a room a little Larger than an Average Closet. It had Double Doors on the outside and a Single Door on the Inside of the Cabin. In this so called Closet sat a 4 or 7 horse, hard to remember but, this was a Sterling Engine made by Coleman the as I remember. Each Cabin had the same Engine. It used Coleman Fuel or White Gas some called it. There was a Large Creek above this Camp and was used to Cool these Engines down in the Summer. Someone had ran Hosing from the Creek down to each Cabin and It was Attached to each Engine and then the Water Lines were tied together and went down a little ways back to the Creek. Maybe you might remember that Coleman also had a Gasoline Heater that worked off of a Catalyst that Burned Gas Fumes through this Catalyst. It worked just like a Hand Warmer from ZIPPO. This is how this Engine got it's Heat. Man, the Hot Side was Hot and with the Cold Water coming in on the Cooling Side this Engine would Run Our Lighting and a Small Black and White TV. Down at the Infirmary, there was another Sterling Engine that was a lot Larger, and way more Powerful. It was used to Power the Small Doctors Office and Examination Room. In the Winter the Operations were different. These Engines have been around a long time Comrade. I believe you can still find this Engine for sale. Where I don't know. Thanks for the upload. PS Could you make another video updating what you've Learned?
Impressive! Would it be worth adding small pressurised reservoir tank above the alterator so that the overall volume of working fluid in the system is larger & any pressure loss through leakage is slower be worth it, or can leakage be "fixed" completely?
My opinion would be to fully enclose and seal the alternator and crank pully on that side of the engine. It's the only way I can think of to keep the crank seal from leaking pressure.
Hello, Your engine is amazing. I'm trying to do one utilizing a Ducati engine but it doesn't work and I don't understand why. Do you think is possible?
Hi Dave! Congratulations for for (almost) finishing this great work! Being a man that made some own Stirlings I understand that you did extremely big amount of work. I Agree with each word you said in these 43 minutes. I have only one question. If you have good fuel (propane, gasoline) you could use IC engine that is of course cheaper and simpler. Do you think about bad fuels like firewood or coal or something like? Best regards from Russia!
Well, the Internal Combustion Engine in a generator form is actually more complicated (At LEAST 23 moving parts in a 2 cylinder generator), less efficient, and may not be cheaper than this (when finalized) in production. This engine is expected to have a thermal efficiency of 25% using propane based on his calculations. A modern small (1400watts running) generator has an efficiency of only 6.64% using propane or 15.6% using gasoline. If this little generator can manage a 500watt load at anywhere near the projected efficiency, this could easily be used as a generator for camping trip wherein small 12 volts devices could be used up to 41.6 amps. Also, carrying a 20lb (4.7 gal with 4.2lb weight) propane bottle on a camping trip that could have an effective runtime of 63 hours at 500watts would be MUCH preferrable to carrying a modern Internal Combustion Generator that would use 8.4 gallons (50.4lb weight) of gas for near the same amount of run time. (give or take 2 hours)
@@renloris460 why is a generator running on propane so much less than one running on gasoline? According to this resources, propane has a Gasoline Gallon Equivalent of 80.19%. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent#Gasoline_gallon_equivalent_tables What am I missing?
Here in Russia we have cheap mains gas, so we can get electricity for 1 cent per kwh in winter and for 10 cents in summer (thowing out heat or even use in heat-powered Vuilleumier conditioners to save electricity). I mean we can just use regular IC generator with heat recuperation and since we have to use gas for producing heat anyway, we can get cheap electricity. But with coal the problem can be solved in old and proven way - using steam engines - as simple and effective as stirlings and very powerful almost like IC engines. So why we need a stirling? I can't understand a goal.
how about a gas heat to start and twin alternators 1 for excess powering things and 1 for heating up an electrical plate in the head so you can either use gas or the hot plate. An alternator type could be incorporated into your external pulley wheel to supply electric for the cylinder heater. For no gas start an adaption to the flywheel would be an old fashioned starting handle to get up the momentum for the heater head as the heater current will flow via the handle. Hope this makes sense.
I love the sound of this engine. So quiet, like a gentle breeze :) It is so mesmerizing I could spend a whole day watching this thing run. How much load can it handle at the moment?
Does anyone have further info on the design software mentioned, including experience using it? I find it frustrating that these types of videos rarely show any power production. How it works without being under load is not very interesting, especially given how noisy some Stirling's are under load. This looks promising, but 2 videos spaced 5 years apart ... another reason I believe in open designs: everyone can help make things better -- but we HAVE to measure results! Personally I'm interested mostly in free piston types, and large-scale community solar/geothermal Stirlings.
(What I call EPS -- Environment Powered Solutions - also includes sustainable biofuels used wisely, like burning for heat in a rocket stove, and hydro and wind power. Whatever fits, and comes out of, the local environment in a sustainable, hopefully restorative fashion. Also, some methods are much more efficient when all needs are considered, given we all need hot water and heat as well, and thermal storage is much cheaper than chemical storage, like batteries, especially when weight is not a big factor.)
I read from wikapedia about the third made working sterling engine ever made James Sterling made it for a foundry, as a water pump. The engine worked, only 40 rpm, but apparently had amazing power, with a 12 inch wide cylinder bore! It had 700,000 pounds of pressure and was a wapping 21 horsepower engine! The first Stirling engine made was used for a quarry until unfortunately became overheated.
@@arkatub ..yeah ..when I last checked a single Peltier in reverse could provide 0.1 v with just body heat...I can't imagine if it was made in a bigger scale meant for power generation...we could use those vacant desert and just plant the cold side with heatsink into the cooler ground and hot side facing the sun all day... This is the result of my diy experiment with 3 module in series with a Joule thief (1.5dcv to 3.3dcv).. my currency is not as strong as the US dollar...so I had to find the cheapest ways to make it work...less fragile than solar panels... ruclips.net/video/Q3dqGk5Byms/видео.html
@@surenbono6063 "TEGpro Thermoelectric Generator Experts" is the channel I saw with the most development in this direction, they made actual products, their 45w unit is >$500 and they had to resort to water cooling for more powerful units - gives an impression of the limitations of this method.
@@arkatub ... generally..they can try it in the oceans for water cooling...and incorporate copper & aluminium heatsink to react with sodium as another source of energy generation... But if you try to fit a standard Peltier module ( 40mmx40mm) on a 2m x 1m standard 72 cell panel you could series connect at least 1250pcs of it and yield up to 500 watts each module just yielding 0.4dcv not including the oceanic sodium reaction....
@@surenbono6063 I feel like you would not need much cooling if the module could survive higher temperatures, 500-1500c (the temperature of fire), did you ever think about making a custom module? I see people have made copper oxide thermocouples, I think if you did it with many tiny wires and use zinc as well as copper you could do much better, I may have to investigate this...
So, if it needs a bigger cooling system, why not add one? or maybe have a pilot light and temperature controlled fuel system. I see you have a generator on it. Have you tried pulling the rated power out of it at full warm up? Lets see it power something.
I would like, and have always wanted, to get s Stirling Generator up and going that ran from a wood fire, in outback Australia, miles from anywhere, no petrol or gas but plenty of wood, this would be much sort after.
First off congrats you've done one heck of a job. I've made a couple Stirling engines myself though nothing nearly as robust as this. I have a couple of questions/observations. 1. Why are you water cooling this thing? Without a radiator and water pump it seems you'd wind up insulating your condenser/cold side in a water jacket. 2. In the same vein why not attach the frame up flush with the condenser and use it to radiate heat away? I'd wager that would work better than the water setup you currently have. Stirling engines run more efficient and produce greater amounts of power when there is a larger temperature difference between the hot and cold sides.
I believe he's running the water around the propane bottle which, as it discharges, gets quite cold and thus cools the water. Your points are spot on and I believe he said a "real version" would have radiator/etc.
Im curious... have you considered using a hydrogen seperator and instead of a single flame injected, why not use a radial flame assembly. Hydrogen burns around 2400 degrees. The hydrogren seperator could, be powered by the generator as well... Thoughts?
So you get 700W with 125cc of chamber volume, that would be 5600W per liter, find it very good ! Might this scale decently linear as chamber size increases ?
What has happened to this very promising work? Has it joined the large pile of literally hundreds of stirling engine prototypes that were never completed and never became marketable products? How has this advanced beyond Philip's engines of the 1940s? The last update was four years ago...where are you?
Innovators like you does more to humanity than 100 politicians,Keep up the good work sire.All the best.
Wrong politicians have zero innovation
Well, you know what's better than 100 politicians?
10 politicians.
So that's not a high bar you've set, but I agree that this is what improvement of Stirling engines need!
This is the best stirling engine I've ever seen, hands down. I hope you get this design to market. Such a compact and efficient engine would be perfect for a hybred electric vehicle like a motorcycle or scooter. Compatibility with multiple heat sources would give this an advantage as well. Maybe a multi fuel compressed air powered burner or gasifier for use in rural or off-grid areas as a generator. I'll be keeping a close eye on this and wishing you the best of luck! Excellent work!
Eeeeeh a turbine would be probably better for a hybrid car, while a stiling engine is pretty good a turbine is more efficient, smaller and also multi fuel.
@@sierraecho884 all those things are actually advantages the Stirling has over a turbine, as well as being much more reliable and 1/4 the cost...
@@drdoofenshootz7 The Stirling has a way too low weight to performance ratio which is important in mobility applications. It´s also not cheaper than a turbine generally speaking depending on the design and many other factors. As I have already said a small turbine is more power dens, it´s lighter smaller is not as expensive and is just as reliable. But in the end it depends on many factors. Honestly I would test both and compare the two.
it's a pleasure to listen to a practical description of an engineering project by a mechanical engineer! Thanks for sharing this. Doug
I think the RV market would love this. Many campgrounds do not permit generators to run after certain hours. This may solve that problem.
I really appreciate the verbal discussion. I’ve watched dozens of Stirling engine videos and 95% have no useful audio. Sure i learned from those mimed videos, but so much more information can be gleaned from the spoken word.
Dear David,
May I ask if you are selling these generators at the moment?
If so, where can I buy one and what would the price be?
Regards
That's a great point, I hadn't thought of that before. An RV would definitely benefit from this. Even if a conventional generator was three times more efficient at producing watts per fuel consumed, this could be an additional power source that ran silently when needed.
I was just reading the February 1948 issue of popular science and there is a great article in there about the 4 cylinder philips hot air engine . Then I started looking online for more info and came across your channel . I am very impressed with your design and look forward to seeeing more !
Beautifully engineered, it would be nice to see a load applied to the generator. :)
Neat job!
I particularly love how quietly the engine is running.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to post this. You've clearly put a lot of time and effort into it, and by sharing this you are answering many questions that capable DIY builders have. I would be very interested in something like this that is optimized to run on wood-gas, and the generator is wound to produce 48V, as a back-up to a wind/solar off-grid electrical system. I cannot make propane at a remote cabin, but I can make wood-gas if I have plenty of trees.
What a beautiful piece of engineering.
You were talking about application as an (approx) 750w generator, i just wanted to give you an idea where i think a production version of this would excell greatly if it can be made at a similar price to a conventional 1000w invertor generator.
I live on a boat and many others use boats for a hobby, when we moor we currently have only solar or a piston generator to maintain batteries and provide mains power.
Running an invertor generator is too loud for long periods when other people are nearby.
The boat environment means there is an unlimited supply of cooling water for the cold side, it merely needs a hose to pull water from the river and a suitable pump (maybe crank driven).
If this device can be made compact enough to be lifted from a locker and placed on the bank by one person then i believe if it is powerfull enough to drive the multiphase alternator from an invertor generator which is then converted to high-voltage DC and back to 50hz A/C via the standard invertor gen electronics then i believe you have found your market.
Quite running is essential in this environment and also due to fuel availability on the river bank a burner which can be powered by diesel or kerrosene would make this extremely desirable to boat owners.
The most popular conventional generator used in this consumer group is the honda eu1000i and the 750 variant. These produce 1000w and 750w respectively and are regulated via the invertor technology meaning a stable set speed rpm is not necassary since the conversion between dc and ac takes care of these parameters.
The 750w varient for example does not use variable speed control only 2 speed settings for 300w and 750w output selection, it seems a perfect match for the claimed power of your machine.
The piston engine used in an invertor generator is a 60cc 4 stroke which i believe is rated at approx 1hp.
I personally would love to see a device like yours come into fruition since the exhaust from a burner could even allow it to be fitted inside the boat with a thru hull exhaust similar to a diesel heater.
Hope these ideas lead to something great!
Mat.
Bravo. Where is the project today in July 2021
This is the best design of a Stirling engine that I have ever seen. Great attention have been given to the displacer side where the heat capturing/ transfer side is beautifully made while the cold side is nicely finned and the ends could be more streamlined at the entry and exit points for better dynamic flow. In order for the Stirling engine to be efficient, most of the heat from the source must go through the piston to the cold end, in that when there is the compression due to the air being heated, then the power piston expand robbing heat from the compressed heated air which would cool down and lose pressure. The heat lost that does not go through the power piston is that which goes through the cylinder walls of the displacer. IN this particular engine extreme care was taken to isolate this heat lost through using heat resisting material between the hot end , the regenerator and the cold end touching the crankcase and I would say that there exists the success of this particular engine.
I often question another issue in the Stirling engine and wish readers would consider this . When the air is at the hot end, where it acquires heat energy hence pressure, then a little later there is the expansion of the power piston, acquiring power, which cools the hot air down due to the expansion and after this there is an interesting issue where some of the hot air that lost temperature due to the expanding piston will have to be transferred to the cool side through the hot end so before some of the relatively hot air cools down, it is required to heat up again momentarily thus cooling the hot end. This energy does not go through the piston! I have to rethink this situation as there could be some benefit if the hot air is passed to the cool side through another path other than the hot end. Please note that this is still a postulate and introducing another path for the hot air to go to the cold end might deserve some more thinking.
Thanks for the excellent video and break down, I'm just starting to learn about these and have been discouraged by the lack of information I can find about a practical build. I'm looking forward to seeing an update!
It’s been 5 years I took a while to see this as I thought the channel was forever done. Great any more updates coming out?
WOW!!! Very impressive! You did an excellent job! Thanks for sharing. :)
The best Stirling I've ever seen! Great job!
This the best Stirling Engine video I have seen yet and I would like to have a conversation about longer run time and an alternative heat source.
Zrobiłeś piękną robotę. Szacunek.
I will definitely buy one of these. You should do a kick-starter! If you showed a timeline I'd definitely buy one in advance to help fund development.
thank you for your presentation and demonstration for your stirling engine. it was worth to watch :) i think size of the engine and its power production is practical for green energy usage. idea to use existing compressor parts to start project was great and speeds up development. for data point view i would like to see some meters for rpm, temperatures and power pruduction etc. For further use version with solar power source would be interesting.
Speaking of green energy, Colin Furz created a wood gas unit that powered his lawnmower. If you can replace the propane with wood gas you have a truly green but still gas-powered sterling engine, with minimal changes to engine design. Really, you would just be connecting the line to a wood gas producer instead of a propane bottle. ruclips.net/video/FK2qK-NCQH8/видео.html
The propane tank was put in the coolant water. As the propane tank empties, it cools. Cooling the coolant water. Neat!
Do you have a per unit price projection yet? This is a very nicely engineered unit! Any plans on enlargement or hanging units?
Beautiful work!
Excellent, really fascinating and well done. What sort of amps does it push out and how much gas does it use?🎉
Where is your Kickstarter or Patreon? With 3D printing the possibilities are tremendous. Thank You for your very hard work!
Well done video. Bravo on your achievements and keep up the good work!
Looks like a Chrysler A/C compressor (base). I'm super intrigued! (D'Oh, I should have listened before I commented!). Amazing work.
The foil regenerator is one of the most important parts for a stirling engine, and the trick with the ouncturing wheel for uniform spacing is genius, thank you.
My question here would only be, how do you make sure that the displacer does not touch the foil ? Or does it slightly touch it on the bumps ?
Thanks for sharing. I look forward to future updates!
Hi, have you tried burning wood in a rocketstove as a heatsource?
The heat in the afterburnchamber can reach as high as 1000°C.
The benefit is that you don't have any pollution of any kind.
I am inspired by this engine truly!
Great great great excellent job near perfection and thank you. I hope to be make production line to support peoples and environment.
Very impressive work; and good scientific explanation. It sure sounds nice.
One question; when operating the engine with varying loads; how is a Stirling engine governed / throttled? It seems this engine runs at a nice, steady speed with only the waterpump as an electrical load. How does the system maintain stable operating speed with varying loads?
I'm familiar with internal combustion engines where they vary the heat added to each compressed air charge; or vary the density of the charge; just curious how the Stirling cycle is regulated.
Thanks!
Impressive!
I did some research on old sterling engines and this is what I find the most amusing-
I read from wikapedia about the third made working sterling engine ever made. James Sterling made it for a foundry, as a water pump.
The engine worked, only 40 rpm, but apparently had amazing power, with a 12 inch wide cylinder bore! It had 700,000 pounds of pressure and was a wapping 21 horsepower engine!
The first Stirling engine made was used for a quarry until unfortunately became overheated.
even though it was rated at only 21 hp, this is actual HP and not just peak hp like Briggs and stratton does, take the muffler and air filter off and say it's 18hp, when in reality it's probably just 16hp.
So when a Stirling engine is only 40 rpm, that seems lame compared to today's standards, but in reality that also means that the torque much stronger than what a 21 hp engine would be from a small engine, I didn't find a torque unfortunately, but it lifted a few tons of rocks.
it must have been pretty strong, stronger than a steam engine possibly.
@greensolarwind just look on wikipedia sterling engine.
There's a nice moving diagram that shows the operating movement of the sterling engine.
Or just sterling engine or Ericsson hot air engine in your browser searchbar to see images of these amazing engines.
Also there's three hot air engines in the steam engine section of the National museum of American history.
In Washington DC of course.
@sourand jaded
Sterling engines are real; I have a small model that works, but Sterling engines have to be perfectly timed or something. Otherwise, they stop spinning, if you know how a
A/C pump works that's basically what a Sterling engine is.
It uses the hot to cold difference in temperature to make an expansion of air, like an explosion.
I won't say that Wikipedia is exactly a good area to look for everything.
Information is not always correctly put in words.
Yeah, a wood gas engine is pretty cool, but that's an entirely different engine, not very comparable.
@sourand jaded
The thing is, even if I can find books that give me information, you're never going to find books that old that a library will even let you touch, I have tried looking for historical musical instruments, and they just won't let you touch anything valuable, those fools, there are amazing reed organs that people treat like trash, and I wanted to find them in museums, but they just don't care about keeping that history alive.
It's Stirling - not Sterling!
I have a question if you have the time to consider it, would there be an advantage to attaching a small compressor to chill water going into the cold side?
The purpose of this would be to allow the engine to run with a smaller temprature difference at the expense of thermal efficiancy for use in heat reclemation and solar applications allowing it to run in less ideal conditions
una pregunta si se aumenta la presión interior del gas por ejemplo a 100 bares si aumentaría su producción a kilovatios??
otra pregunta cual de los dos gases para un motor Stirling es mejor usar: si nitrógeno o helio
y por que??
te quiero dar muchas gracias con este video me pareció fabulosos me sacase de varias dudas que tenia, estas eran teóricas.
te agradezco por compartir esta gran información a las personas que le llaman mucho la atención este tipo de motores
Dios te bendiga y sigue compartiendo mas de este tipoi de contenido
You never showed the regenerator as a disassembled part, as part of the cylinder head assembly, what or how is the regenerator made?
Great video!
I'm impressed by the attention to details you've put into that Stirling engine!
I really like to see attempt at pressurized chamber - this proportionally increases the work that the engine can produce, and is imho the only way to proper Stirling engine.
However I don't like the use of air (or Nitrogen) as it has about 5 times lower thermal conductivity of Helium (and almost 7 times that of Hydrogen). At ~6 bars you're just compensating the low thermal conductivity of Nitrogen, and to do more work a Stirling engine should operate at high pressures with high thermal conductivity gas. In a video of Philips Stirling Cryogenics they're using 100 bars.
Of course leaks would be the main challenge with pressurized Hydrogen or Helium, but imho it's the way to go.
I'm not engineer and not familiar with the challenge of isolating a piston from leaks of pressurized H or He, but I guess if nothing else a magnetic piston can be used over the wall of the cylinder to ensure zero change for the gas to escape (I guess at 0% leaks even Hydrogen would be safe, as it's exactly the leaks of H that create the main danger).
Another thing that you can improve or at least switch to greener alternative is the heat source.
As you know Stirling engine has nothing to do with combustion at all, it's just the easiest way to deliver heat. But 600°C you can make a simple mirrors (or perhaps Fresnel lens) structure to capture and concentrate sunlight to the Hot tank. By the way if using sunlight you might want to put the Hot tank under glass cover, to ensure that the high frequency light waves pass thru, but that the infra-red waves of the generated heat can't penetrate back from the inside and escape.
Actually as you know temp. difference is critical for the Stirling engine efficiency, so going over 600°C would help greatly, and shouldn't be difficult - just concentrate more sunlight (or btw most gas torches can easily reach 1200~1400°C). Lowering the Cold tank temp is also very important 100°C is rather high. Actually for the same temp.diff. if it's closer to the absolute 0°K the better your engine efficiency will be. At 100°C Cold & 600°C Hot tanks you'll be limited to about 57% max. theoretical efficiency (if you can reach higher 30-ies % in real world efficiency would be already great achievement and probably impossible to improve without major redesign). But if you can take the Cold tank temp to 20°C with the same 500°C difference you'll get 6% higher efficiency (potentially 3-4% real world eff.) ... to the 600°C you're working with you'll get 6% more max.eff. and if you can deliver ~1200°C of a gas torch you can reach up to 80% max.eff. (ie that could translate to about 40 to 53% real world eff.)
I'm greatly impressed by your effort to minimize the noise and wear'n'tear! From what I can tell about half the noise was produced by the burning fuel (which replaced by CSP can eliminate it).
Perhaps designing the Hot tank to switch between fossil fuel burner and a CSP during the day would be very convenient as a generator usage.
Btw for a better solar power receiver I would paint the fins around the Hot tank in something like Vanta black and put a glass container around it (ideally closed to avoid loss of heat by escaping hot air). This way the black surface would absorb the sunlight faster, and the glass cover would trap the produced infra-red waves inside (actually a double layered glass cover would be ideal as the vacuum between the two layers would reduce greatly the heat loss thru conduction).
Roughly speaking given that average solar radiation is about 1000W/m², if you can capture 80% of it and turn half of it into usable energy, you'll be doing great! (Twice as good as PV panels!)
I know that as a car engine a Stirling won't be a good solution (at least not competitive to the existing ones), because Stirling engine lacks torque, and high efficiency and safety can be a challenge in a restricted space of a car.
But a stationary solar energy harvester imo Stirling engine can do amazing, and you'd like you can charge your EV with some of that energy and still drive at very low expense and cleanly (and preferably with cheaper cars ones battery prices come down).
If a CSP system is scaled up enough you can use part of the harvested energy to store it in Cryo Cold tanks (perhaps in the form of liquid air with appropriate insulation of course) btw Stirling engines make great cryo heat pump too! And later when the sun is out you can use the stored temp. diff. (to the outside env. temp, or a gas operated Hot tank) to convert it back to electricity with great efficiency (~73% for -196° & 16°C, or even 91% for -196°C and 600°C burner)
You should manufacture it, preppers/off grid people Would love Your generator
Beautiful engine sir!
Would the heat outlet on top of the burner be better if it was smaller contains more heat and in turn the burner could be turned down saving on gas use
Could you heat the Chrysler sterling compressor with hho gas
The channel is not active for a long time? Any plans for more videos?
Good day sir. Five years later, that’s true, but how can you benefit from this great experience that is yours?
If I could design one from the ground up I would make it a 6 cylinder with a hot plate to hook up to wood fired stoves for off grid usage and then whatever the efficiency of the engine the rest is used for heating. I would hope for the 6-cylinder arrangement to keep it in even more balance for silent operation. For the cooling side a liquid cooling tower would be used with at least 500 liters of water and connections to replace that water and put the war water into a hot water tank inside a house. I imagine doing this once a day would be done even in Spring and Autumn. Even if this is not done the mass of the water keep at least one room warm for the night. Or you could cycle the water to different water tanks around the house or property. I would make it open to and put a gauge in there and you would have to cycle it manually. But just in case you did put steaming hot water in a system, the other tanks would also be open containers. For the final use it would of course be hooked up to an AC motor for generating AC into a hybrid charge controller for the house. I imagine in 50 years this sort of system being the ultimate in home heating, water and electricity. With a good, solidly built electrical system these would eliminate the need for things such as grid power in many rural areas where it is barely sustainable to get it there as well as big construction projects. I sure would hope to have this system in my home one day alas I do not have the funding to go through with an undertaking as such.
Thank you for posting this online Mr. Kirk and for the clear explanations and the open information you have provided. I wish you all the best.
It is a clever bit to use propane as the fuel and then run the water cooling around that tank. Like a can of dust off becomes ice cold as you let the compressed air out there is a temperature pressure co-relation and as you release propane there is a cooling effect taking place on the gas inside which you can borrow with water to make the heat dissipation better.
What I think myself and a lot of people would also be interested in is a heater input similar to what is used on the big stirlings in India.
It is like a boiler that they start a fire in and when it gets hot enough they put the head of their Stirling into the perfectly fitting window of the boiler and they get several hours of use out of it before they have to tend to the fire again or add fuel ( which can be done from the top while the window is occupied with the stirling ) Not that propane fuel isn't more efficient, easy enough to get, cheap and reliable and can provide some extra cooling. But it would be awesome is if you had a generator that you could power with a campfire or have the option to use a special made boiler or LPG.
Congratulation on this sensationally beautiful prototype. However, I had the impression that a Sterling engine was meant to run on any "waste heat." Would that be true? Therefore, what minimum heat intensity is required to bring about the "Stirling effect?"
Also, I am truly sorry for your friend's early death as your mentor and helper in the construction of this best ever Stirling Engine I saw.
Could a solar lens or reflector be used for Heat? Preppers would love it. Even wood gas.
woodgas is more useful in a combustion engine , lots more power.
@@chriskwakernaat2328 they need to abandon solar. wood gas and plastic garbage fuel is the way to go.
Nicely done!
Any updates?
(Sorry about your friend Arch)
It would be nice to see what kind of actual work load it might accomplish.
have you tried n enclosed heater part? like n insulated container for the burner to keep as much heat as possible? maybe use a small engine fuel injector?
Очень интересно. Спасибо.
Excelente, gracias por compartir !!!
It's very nice. How well does it hold its charge for? Is it powerful enough to have a little air pump? How well does it run under load and such?
As it is it is very beautiful
Dear Mr kirkolator; I have a couple ideas for you, most likely you already thought of them but hey I might look at it differently and see something you didn't. 1) instead of running an external flywheel use an aluminum casing covering where the flywheel and generator pulley shaft should be and internally install a flywheel with embedded magnets with windings fastened inside the casing to keep the shaft seal leakage minimized since you could start rotation by stimulating the coils, then once running the windings will act as an ac generator, not optimal in motor mode but it is only need for a few rotations. 2)use a catalytic material in your exhaust to get the most out of your energy input (along with insulation) 3) use a dual fuel set up, propane to preheat head then once hot use a diverter valve to transfer to kerosene using the pressure from the propane to feed the fuel. kerosene has higher specific energy and is cheaper.
I would love to have something like this to work on...
So if the heat source was a hot plate, and that was powered by 100 watt solar panel and couple batteries, then could this stifling engine turn a propeller, in Chris craft mahogany runabout, if so, at what knots?
Where can I buy one of these? Are you selling plans?
Dear David,
May I ask if you are selling these generators at the moment?
If so, where can I buy one and what would the price be?
Regards
Thank you 🌡️🍀⚡🍀⚡🍀🌻
I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention! Fantastic work, it's a little heavy though?
I've always wandered if a Sterling could use an ammonia/water base for the heat transfer cycle. There would be corrosion issues. You would need to add a condensing coil, a condensation separation tank, a separation condensing coil and simple one way flow valves. But the expansion rate would be massive up next to anything ever put in a Sterling. And it could double as the cooling system. It would be a closed loop Sterling Steam engine. Then use a Fresnel lens to power it.
I will by one or more. These would sell well here in the N. Cascades. I'm a mechanic and think you did extremely well.
I think there is still much improvement that could be made.
1. There is no insulation and heat transfer between the new and burned air in the burner, much of the heat escapes unhindered through the opening.
2. Free piston design would probably have less friction.
3. What kind of generator is being used ? A stepper motor or a brushless motor / generator would be best.
4. Is there no battery to be charged ?
5. The engine should work much better with pressurized helium.
Also why an alpha configuration in the first place ? In this case, because most components are already build and can be picked off the shelf, but for a dedicated stirling type engine a Gamma or Beta or even free piston or even more modern a Thermoacoustic type engine would be much much simpler and cheaper. A thermoscoustic type engine for example does not have any moving parts besides the membrane which replaces the power piston. No small tolerances and machining needed at all. Bot the displacer piston and the working piston are made out of air so to speak, which is the cheapest and least machining needed part that can be. This engine here is very nice, very well build but why is this 70 year old design used ? Why nothing new ? We can build much better machines in the mean time. For instance we can 3D print metal parts and optimize for strength weight and surface area in the burned for instance. Even the 70 year old Philips design used Beta Stirling configuration. This is the part that keeps annoying me, all this time spend for this old design, why not a free piston stirling or thermoacoustic ? I have build one out of dog food cans and I can trickle charge my phone with it. I didn´t use any type of machining, just some cans, steel wool, insulation material, rubber membranes, magnets and a 3D printed spool holder + copper wire and full bridge rectifier. Given proper engineering and materials the engine could be improved tenfold.
how do i get ahold of you
I think I could do has everything to make a 5kw generator motor? If you want to place an order and buy it, what cost would it have, if it would be possible to place an order
Hi! Any update on Stirling Engine SV-2 Mk II?
Did this ever get to market?
Hello. Can this Stirling engine be bought?
I am a machinist is it possible to buy the pieces from you or drawings? I have the Chrysler air conditioning pump and always wanted to make an engine.
Hi, would adapting the burner used by eberspacher diesel heater be of use for a regulated heat source. I am designing a vessel that would very much be able to make use of 500 watts at 12v and be quite. Incorporated with solar and lithium batteries.
Best of luck and love your work.
Regards Pieter from New Zealand.
Final product available??
Good job! Congratulations!
That is a thing of beauty! When are you going to try compressed helium in there?
Hello, I need a diagram of the process of gas behavior inside the engine, showing the expansion and contraction of gas and the effect of temperature
No new videos?
great work
I note that you are using propane as a fuel. I wonder the ease of attaching 'a line' or connector to allow a biomass burner as an alternative fuel. Why? I's like to mount the unit in a campervan and collect biomass as I travel around Australia. Ideally, I'd like to capture 'solar', 'biomass' as well as shore power as options, for feeding into primary vehicle and secondary lifestyle batteries, but heat recovery is also useful as hot water.
Thanks for the video. Keep the pressure on. I don't who killed sterling engines. There should be a lot more sterlings around than there are today. I would love to see a giant scale engine (the size of a cruze ship deisile engine) generating electricity from solar or geothermal heat.
Okay, hate to Burst your Stirling Bubble, but Coleman Beat you to it. 50 Years ago, I was staying at a Boys Scott Camp. At that time I was in the Cub Scotts. I stayed in a Cabin with I guess, about 20 or so other Scotts. There was a room a little Larger than an Average Closet. It had Double Doors on the outside and a Single Door on the Inside of the Cabin. In this so called Closet sat a 4 or 7 horse, hard to remember but, this was a Sterling Engine made by Coleman the as I remember. Each Cabin had the same Engine. It used Coleman Fuel or White Gas some called it. There was a Large Creek above this Camp and was used to Cool these Engines down in the Summer. Someone had ran Hosing from the Creek down to each Cabin and It was Attached to each Engine and then the Water Lines were tied together and went down a little ways back to the Creek. Maybe you might remember that Coleman also had a Gasoline Heater that worked off of a Catalyst that Burned Gas Fumes through this Catalyst. It worked just like a Hand Warmer from ZIPPO. This is how this Engine got it's Heat. Man, the Hot Side was Hot and with the Cold Water coming in on the Cooling Side this Engine would Run Our Lighting and a Small Black and White TV. Down at the Infirmary, there was another Sterling Engine that was a lot Larger, and way more Powerful. It was used to Power the Small Doctors Office and Examination Room. In the Winter the Operations were different. These Engines have been around a long time Comrade. I believe you can still find this Engine for sale. Where I don't know. Thanks for the upload. PS Could you make another video updating what you've Learned?
Impressive! Would it be worth adding small pressurised reservoir tank above the alterator so that the overall volume of working fluid in the system is larger & any pressure loss through leakage is slower be worth it, or can leakage be "fixed" completely?
My opinion would be to fully enclose and seal the alternator and crank pully on that side of the engine. It's the only way I can think of to keep the crank seal from leaking pressure.
Hello,
Your engine is amazing.
I'm trying to do one utilizing a Ducati engine but it doesn't work and I don't understand why.
Do you think is possible?
Hi Dave! Congratulations for for (almost) finishing this great work! Being a man that made some own Stirlings I understand that you did extremely big amount of work. I Agree with each word you said in these 43 minutes. I have only one question. If you have good fuel (propane, gasoline) you could use IC engine that is of course cheaper and simpler. Do you think about bad fuels like firewood or coal or something like? Best regards from Russia!
Well, the Internal Combustion Engine in a generator form is actually more complicated (At LEAST 23 moving parts in a 2 cylinder generator), less efficient, and may not be cheaper than this (when finalized) in production. This engine is expected to have a thermal efficiency of 25% using propane based on his calculations. A modern small (1400watts running) generator has an efficiency of only 6.64% using propane or 15.6% using gasoline. If this little generator can manage a 500watt load at anywhere near the projected efficiency, this could easily be used as a generator for camping trip wherein small 12 volts devices could be used up to 41.6 amps. Also, carrying a 20lb (4.7 gal with 4.2lb weight) propane bottle on a camping trip that could have an effective runtime of 63 hours at 500watts would be MUCH preferrable to carrying a modern Internal Combustion Generator that would use 8.4 gallons (50.4lb weight) of gas for near the same amount of run time. (give or take 2 hours)
@@renloris460 why is a generator running on propane so much less than one running on gasoline? According to this resources, propane has a Gasoline Gallon Equivalent of 80.19%.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent#Gasoline_gallon_equivalent_tables
What am I missing?
Here in Russia we have cheap mains gas, so we can get electricity for 1 cent per kwh in winter and for 10 cents in summer (thowing out heat or even use in heat-powered Vuilleumier conditioners to save electricity). I mean we can just use regular IC generator with heat recuperation and since we have to use gas for producing heat anyway, we can get cheap electricity. But with coal the problem can be solved in old and proven way - using steam engines - as simple and effective as stirlings and very powerful almost like IC engines. So why we need a stirling? I can't understand a goal.
@@FadeToEvil is small size steam engine > 5 Kw produced and sold in Russia? If so please advise name of the producing Co.
@@saeedthabit8278 no, we have central CHP stations only at the moment. No home power stations like 5 Kw.
Best stirling engine. 0% chance that big oil & government will allow this thing a spot in the market place.
how about a gas heat to start and twin alternators 1 for excess powering things and 1 for heating up an electrical plate in the head so you can either use gas or the hot plate. An alternator type could be incorporated into your external pulley wheel to supply electric for the cylinder heater. For no gas start an adaption to the flywheel would be an old fashioned starting handle to get up the momentum for the heater head as the heater current will flow via the handle. Hope this makes sense.
hi David, how to get in contact with you?
I'm very expressed abbout your work. Is it possible to use this engine in the very light vehicle?
Excellent work. I would like to purchase it
I love the sound of this engine. So quiet, like a gentle breeze :) It is so mesmerizing I could spend a whole day watching this thing run. How much load can it handle at the moment?
I wonder how much more power you would get from a 125cc motorcycle engine if run on the same amount of Propane gas...?
If you wanted a 5000W generator instead of a 500W how would you change the design? More displacement? More cylinders? Both?
Does anyone have further info on the design software mentioned, including experience using it?
I find it frustrating that these types of videos rarely show any power production. How it works without being under load is not very interesting, especially given how noisy some Stirling's are under load. This looks promising, but 2 videos spaced 5 years apart ... another reason I believe in open designs: everyone can help make things better -- but we HAVE to measure results! Personally I'm interested mostly in free piston types, and large-scale community solar/geothermal Stirlings.
(What I call EPS -- Environment Powered Solutions - also includes sustainable biofuels used wisely, like burning for heat in a rocket stove, and hydro and wind power. Whatever fits, and comes out of, the local environment in a sustainable, hopefully restorative fashion. Also, some methods are much more efficient when all needs are considered, given we all need hot water and heat as well, and thermal storage is much cheaper than chemical storage, like batteries, especially when weight is not a big factor.)
I read from wikapedia about the third made working sterling engine ever made James Sterling made it for a foundry, as a water pump.
The engine worked, only 40 rpm, but apparently had amazing power, with a 12 inch wide cylinder bore! It had 700,000 pounds of pressure and was a wapping 21 horsepower engine!
The first Stirling engine made was used for a quarry until unfortunately became overheated.
...a TEG with moving parts.. awesome
It does seem like you could get a lot of TEGs for the price of this.
@@arkatub ..yeah ..when I last checked a single Peltier in reverse could provide 0.1 v with just body heat...I can't imagine if it was made in a bigger scale meant for power generation...we could use those vacant desert and just plant the cold side with heatsink into the cooler ground and hot side facing the sun all day... This is the result of my diy experiment with 3 module in series with a Joule thief (1.5dcv to 3.3dcv).. my currency is not as strong as the US dollar...so I had to find the cheapest ways to make it work...less fragile than solar panels... ruclips.net/video/Q3dqGk5Byms/видео.html
@@surenbono6063 "TEGpro Thermoelectric Generator Experts" is the channel I saw with the most development in this direction, they made actual products, their 45w unit is >$500 and they had to resort to water cooling for more powerful units - gives an impression of the limitations of this method.
@@arkatub ... generally..they can try it in the oceans for water cooling...and incorporate copper & aluminium heatsink to react with sodium as another source of energy generation... But if you try to fit a standard Peltier module ( 40mmx40mm) on a 2m x 1m standard 72 cell panel you could series connect at least 1250pcs of it and yield up to 500 watts each module just yielding 0.4dcv not including the oceanic sodium reaction....
@@surenbono6063 I feel like you would not need much cooling if the module could survive higher temperatures, 500-1500c (the temperature of fire), did you ever think about making a custom module? I see people have made copper oxide thermocouples, I think if you did it with many tiny wires and use zinc as well as copper you could do much better, I may have to investigate this...
how about a small generator powered by a wood stove?
Very Very Nice !!
So, if it needs a bigger cooling system, why not add one? or maybe have a pilot light and temperature controlled fuel system. I see you have a generator on it. Have you tried pulling the rated power out of it at full warm up? Lets see it power something.
I would like, and have always wanted, to get s Stirling Generator up and going that ran from a wood fire, in outback Australia, miles from anywhere, no petrol or gas but plenty of wood, this would be much sort after.
First off congrats you've done one heck of a job. I've made a couple Stirling engines myself though nothing nearly as robust as this. I have a couple of questions/observations.
1. Why are you water cooling this thing? Without a radiator and water pump it seems you'd wind up insulating your condenser/cold side in a water jacket.
2. In the same vein why not attach the frame up flush with the condenser and use it to radiate heat away? I'd wager that would work better than the water setup you currently have. Stirling engines run more efficient and produce greater amounts of power when there is a larger temperature difference between the hot and cold sides.
I believe he's running the water around the propane bottle which, as it discharges, gets quite cold and thus cools the water. Your points are spot on and I believe he said a "real version" would have radiator/etc.
fantastic
Im curious... have you considered using a hydrogen seperator and instead of a single flame injected, why not use a radial flame assembly. Hydrogen burns around 2400 degrees. The hydrogren seperator could, be powered by the generator as well...
Thoughts?
Any word? You know I want a copy. How are we going to get you off of top dead center?
So you get 700W with 125cc of chamber volume, that would be 5600W per liter, find it very good !
Might this scale decently linear as chamber size increases ?
What has happened to this very promising work? Has it joined the large pile of literally hundreds of stirling engine prototypes that were never completed and never became marketable products? How has this advanced beyond Philip's engines of the 1940s? The last update was four years ago...where are you?
Agreed. They all seem to just stop after 2-3 uploads and never heard from again..
@altf5326 I hope you're wrong because that will surely be his downfall.