Stirling Engines - the power of the future?
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- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
- Stirling engines are having a bit of a revival. What are they, and how do they work? Could they generate our electricity in the future? See the follow-up video: • Stirling engines - an ...
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I like machines that show their workings. You can see all the parts of a stirling engine doing their jobs. Stirling engines are simple, but use a principle that may be unfamiliar to many viewers. One thing that you have to remember from your science classes is that gases expand and contract very rapidly indeed, making this sort of engine practical.
Stirling engines are not very powerful nor do they have great power to weight ratios. I know of one annual boat race that takes place in England on a river using stirling engines, and it is somewhat sedate.
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"Its a stirling engine, and whats more its a stirling engine and you might be wondering: What's a stirling engine? Well, this is"
*Video ends*
I will never tire of your humor.
@ It would also need to be Stirling Engine because it's a noun.
@@dcarbs2979 "a Stirling engine", capital S after Robert Stirling, small e because engine is just a normal noun.
@@GrumpaGladstone1809 I got it wrong i think.
Stirling engine = Noun
Stirling Engine = Proper noun
Sterling engine / sterling engine = adjective. Make up your own pun accordingly :-)
A Stirling Engine is a sterling engine.
@@dcarbs2979 Yes. It's a sterling engine, and a Stirling engine. You got it :)
@@nicholasadams2374 even if silver was the best material, i just haven't the sterling for a sterling sterling stirling engine but i reckon raheem has...
I love how I have become an ardent defender and advocate of the Stirling Engine ten minutes into this video.
Rightly so, they are almost better than other engines in every way , being silent, safe and lacking any waste product whatsoever, except for the power/weight ratio which unfortunately matters a lot.
@@ahmadtarek7763 I'm sure the power and weight ratio can be improved upon greatly. You could probably improve it a lot just by adding a more intricate pulley system lol
@@AcidxAnarchy I don't think pulleys would help--they'd just change the torque ratio, not the amount of energy coming out, which is useful for some applications but doesn't really help in terms of power generation. The main avenue of improvement is getting the weight down, I think.
@@Ignonym i believe that there was an effort to make an electric car where the stirling engine didnt directly cause a car to drive, rather it charged a battery which powered the car. Quoting a piece on it "The MOD II project in 1980 produced one of the most efficient automotive engines ever made. The engine reached a peak thermal efficiency of 38.5%, compared to a modern spark-ignition (gasoline) engine, which has a peak efficiency of 20-25%. The Mod II project replaced the normal spark-ignition engine in a 1985 4-door Chevrolet Celebrity notchback. In the 1986 MOD II Design Report (Appendix A) the results showed that highway gas mileage was increased from 40 to 58 mpg‑US (5.9 to 4.1 L/100 km; 48 to 70 mpg‑imp) and achieved an urban range of 26 to 33 mpg‑US (9.0-7.1 L/100 km; 31-40 mpg‑imp) with no change in vehicle gross weight. Startup time in the NASA vehicle was a maximum of 30 seconds, while Ford's research vehicle used an internal electric heater to quickly start the engine, giving a start time of only a few seconds. The high torque output of the Stirling engine at low speed eliminated the need for a torque converter in the transmission resulting in decreased weight and transmission drivetrain losses negating somewhat the weight disadvantage of the Stirling in auto use. This resulted in increased efficiencies being mentioned in the test results."
They are incredibly inefficient, using something like 40HP worth of fossil fuel to make 1 HP. Other than that, I would be a great advocate.
TO quote adam savage "this is not free energy but it is free to me energy"
Or as the British may put it: "this is not free real estate, but it is free to _me_ real estate"
@David Jones It was all given back. And see how they flourish...
@@Rid3thetig3r Turns out life is a lot easier when someone else is telling you what to do. It's a lot harder when you gotta figure it out yourself.
The very best kind in my humble opinion
Like slaves and communists
my guess that these engines would be really good in Iceland, using the geothermal heat and the icy climate would perfect
That's how man-made climate change should be done! :)
True but geothermal is once again more efficient to heat water for steam turbines.
@@theenhancer Why not put stirling engines on top of it?
I mean, with steam turbines you still have waste heat.
Steam turbines are easier to build and maintain. Iceland doesn't need energy efficiency. They have far more heat than they can usefully harvest, but they are too far from other populations to export it.
Iceland? Canada has lots of cold, does it have geothermal as well? Just thinking out loud.
"It's powered by ice, that's cool!"
Doesn't even flinch.
Ya he's not Michael from VSauce.
Lindies hard if humor.... That's what makes him so funny.
6:45 -- "Churches traditionally don't move around that much."
Sage wisdom right there. Not to be overlooked.
To be fair... he's not wrong! :p
Beige wisdom
Although in the novels by Alistair Reynolds, the churches do move..
They do tent to create big movements though.
I've seen some and they weren't moving at all.
I know of an old Stirling engine that is used for a water pump at a farm. Been there for at least a hundred years as there is a bronze plate with the year 1890 on it. It's big and clumsy, but just does its job and seems to need very little upkeep.
yeah it just goes round and round. nothing more and nthing less. no explosions. no nothing. just some warmth and some cold and there ya go
Fascinating, i would like to see a picture.
photo?these were used on american farms cos wood was every where
"Churches don't traditionally move around all that much"
Brilliant
Evidently Lindy has not heard of Warhammer 40k.
I know Churchill’s family church is a museum in Missouri it is great.
Sounds like a circuit preacher, in the early days they were basically a priest with a bible, some wine, and bread on horseback who traveled town to town in rural communities too dispersed to support a full time priest (it occurred in catholic and protestant communities but I think it was more common in rural America and canada with their dispersed farms in the midwest)
Laughs in imperator class
Unless they're on a fault line
We used a Stirling engine powered fan when I was very young. It ran on kerosin/paraffin oil. There was a regenerator. My father had purchased it in the 1940's in Kolkata. We used it when there was a power outage, which was more often than not.
very cool
still have it?
I actually came here after watching a post shared on Facebook showing the type of fan you just mentioned! Thanks for sharing :)
@@putheflamesoutyahoo1503 No, that was almost 70 years ago.
Neat
The Stirling Engine, the engine of the future since 1816
Give it a chance, it's only 23:24 now. Maybe it's the engine of tomorrow.
Just like fusion power.
Mazda will probably buy the license and make a RX9 with it.
@@Penguiniel Fusion with direct energy conversion or gtfo.
Like nuclear fusion perhaps.....always 30 years away.
Leave it to the British to invent an engine that could be powered by a cup of tea.
Brilliant
Rule Britannia
just put the stirling engine on top and it will run xD
And an Indian will own the company
[British intensifies]
“Churches traditionally don’t move around all that much”
Clearly he’s never heard of warhammer
that's why he said "traditionally"
If Billy doesn't go to church, then the church will come to Billy!
@@martinlagman HERESY DETECTED
I was interested in the engine until he started talking. It's 95% his ego and 5% about the Sterling....
@@1tuuber The funny thing is, your comment shows way more ego than he allegedly showed.
I'm currently writing a paper on a Swedish energy company which uses stirling engines to take advantage of excess gasses from heavy mining operations.
Normally these gases are too "rough" to be used so they are just burned straight into the air. Since the stirling engine only needs a temperature difference, it can operate using the heat created from the burning of these excess gasses. Therefor, a lot of energy that was previously wasted can now be turned into electricity.
It's really interesting how something so simple can work. I think this technology has huge potential for the future.
Can I read your paper?
@@evoliveoil It's sadly not published anywhere, and it's in swedish. But you can look up the company if you want, it's called Ripasso Energy. :-)
@@antonhaeffler784 Thanks.
i wonder if it would be more efficient to use those gasses to spin a turbine
@Hakim Mohamad in Iceland they use the Steam to power the turbine.
I'm looking forward to Stirling-punk.
i thought the same thing xD
You might want to look into solar punk, it is already thing. Quite interesting actually.
The cities in the book series Mortal Engines are powered by Stirling Engines. Though the cities don't exactly remain still...
Peter Jackson is producing a movie of it in December 2018.
I think it already fits in with steam punk, really. No reason to create a new genre for it.
I guess it could be kind of a anti steam-punk if you will. While steam-punk is usually dark and dystopian, compounded by the dirty looking soot etc, a stirling punk could be the exact opposite as with delivering clean and fresh energy.
That transition to the trying something hot segment. Was not expecting that and I busted out laughing.
We should have an era called "Stirlingpunk." Like steampunk, but with Stirling engine technology rather than steam
BRilliant!!!
Too late. It's nuclear energy era soon, if not already. People are just scared of it for absolutely no reason.
@Yes No Let's not forget stories like... I don't know... a tidal wave hitting Japan, causing a Nuclear Reactor to detonate as a level 7 accident. (Fukushima, 2011)
Nuclear power isn't as dangerous as people say, but that doesn't mean it's not dangerous, and doesn't mean that it can't leave an area a health hazard for tens of years. Potentially upwards of 40, just to handle removing all the fuel from Fukushima.
@@main135s it's still safer than hydro power
@@main135s Now, if people had stopped using steam power because they blew up, where would we be? It applies to the same area, especially since nuclear energy is now safer than it used to be, and less wasteful.
This could be really useful to me as an amateur science fiction writer. I was looking for a method to 1) get rid of excess heat without massive heat dispersers, and 2) provide some power to the internals of a ship without putting a massive nuclear reactor or something and taking some of that power from the engines and routing it into the ship. This could be really useful for both of those tasks. Thank you, Lindybeige, for proving that you never know when learning for the sake of learning might come in handy.
Be careful if you mean SPACE ship, because seawater around a submarine carries heat away whereas the vacuum of space does not.
You need something to turn heat energy into radiation so it can be emitted into the vacuum. The space station has large radiators unfolded from its modules, that look like solar panels only white.
The vacuum of space does allow heat to travel through it, though. Not as well as an atmosphere, but heat does travel through space.
As Lindy said, space can't carry the heat away very well. The reasoning behind it is that because space is nearly empty, you can't really get the heat dispersed very well. In water you have lots of particles in which to send heat, and it can dissapate into the rest of the water. In space, well, you just have the occasional particle hit you.
IMO, you would be better off with some sort of system that dispenses something with low mass and high heat capacity. Rockets work so well because they are shooting most of the heat that they generate away from themselves in the form of very fast particles.
Great video Lindy! I enjoy your video and almost always learn something.
It might be a cool video idea if you compare and contrast different energy sources. Like the pros and cons of nuclear power vs wind turbines or hydroelectric damns vs geothermal wells and just do one big video on how they all could work and the most viable for the future.
Might be a long video but I'm sure a lot of people would be able to learn a lot from it.
Greetings from the U.S.!
Stirling engines are great. Sweden has a submarine powered with a stirling engine, The US has come to call it "Swedens little carrier killer" It is close to impossible to detect, The US navy literally could not find it, During exercises it "sunk" several of the US's atomic submarines and the largest aircraft carrier, The USS Reagan and was still not detected.
The sub is called the HMS gotland
Swedens politics might be littered with feminists, and our army may the small AF, and we may be pacifists, But we do know how to build military equipment
Yeah, because we're selling it to anyone willing to pay. Shameful, really.
While quiet submarines are definitely a lethal threat, let's not forget that this happened during a time where the US Navy was exceptionally crappy at anti-submarine warfare due to negligence and excessive post Cold War budget cuts. They are trying to remedy those problems now.
Also, a sub that was set up specifically to test the US Navy's ASW defenses is one thing. Actually finding the carrier group out in the ocean, positioning the sub to intercept it and then penetrate its defenses and attack the carrier is quite another.
antred thats interesting.
Lazor XD I love it
This could well be the most interesting video I've seen on RUclips.
Really cool to see a video of someone so knowledgeable & passionate about such an obscure technology. I think we all have that one weird passion we can relate with. Thanks for sharing!
Robert Sterling was one of the scientists that Tesla took great interest in. I don't belief this platform has been applied to it's maximum potential yet, so I'm sure it will play it's part in future energy production.
"From flywheel to good!"
Lindybeige-2k16
This is amazing! As I was learning physics in school, I always wondered if there is an engine, that could turn heat into power instead of just disposing of it.
Well.... steam turbines :)
I have a lab lesson today at Uni and we're using one of these for our experiment this week. I came here to get a head start and I'm glad I did! I feel like I'm going to go in much more prepared now. Thanks!
I thought the video had ended 24 seconds in. Great job, it made me laugh more than I should have.
A Stirling engine powers the quietest and most deadly attack submarine in the world...
Hi do you have any links and why a Stirling engine was used? I'm doing a project about Stirling engines and would love to know where they're being used and for what reasons they chose to use Stirling engines
@@archivearchive9457 Why? Low noise for one. The USN had it attack an alerted Carrier group TWICE and both times it penetrated ALL ASW assets and sunk our super carrier. Go to the sub manufacturers website
@@archivearchive9457 theres a type of sonar that detects noise from the sub engine
@@archivearchive9457
The secret to the world’s most silent submarine
saabgroup.com/media/stories/stories-listing/2015-02/the-secret-to-the-worlds-most-silent-submarine/
@@timearly5226 yeah but I understand that every so often the crew has to do what Lindybeige did, which is to put their hands on the engine to restart it..
3:30 That same method is used to power my step dad's fan. It works, you see because it's on top of an enclosed fireplace, the bottom is hot, but the air above it is colder, so it powers the fan using the differential. It's useful because then the fan blows hotter air back into the room.
That is a peltier cell however, a bit different.
guythepirate Absolutely not. Here's an example of what he's talking about: www.stirlingengine.co.uk/d.asp?product=VULCANSTOVEFAN
Aha thought it was one of these
www.ecofan.co.uk/woodstove-ecofans.html
Never seen a Stirling version! Thanks
SO = IN THE DEAD OF WINTER AND THE DEAD OF SUMMER - ONE OF THESE MACHINES PLANTED IN THE GROUND WITH THE HEAT OF THE EARTH IN THE SUMMER COOLING IT AND THE HEAT OF THE SUN WARMING IT WOULD MAKE IT RUN BEST AND DURING THE WINTER WITH THE HEAT OF THE EARTH WARMING IT AND THE COLD OF THE AIR COOLING THE TOP OF IT AGAIN IT WOULD WORK BEST USING THERMAL ENERGY OF THE EARTHS CHANGES COMPARED TO THE OUTSIDE TEMPERATURE.. HMMMM ... this engine would slow down in the spring and fall compared to the winter and summer
I really enjoyed this, thanks for making it
Actually, close to the equator you could basically modify it to word as a sort of solar-sterling engine. Paint the top black to absorb heat and keep the bottom in in the shade and you can still get a decent output, especially considering that you aren’t even using fuel.
Could also make some sort of water cool at the bottom.
I like to think of the suggested Stirling submarine. In a tense moment the captain orders the whole crew to do jumping jacks in order to heat up the inside of the sub even more to get just a bit more speed and escape!
The Swedes use a sterling powered submarine! The Gotland Class.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland-class_submarine
wasn't there a Finnish sub that used one and beat the US navy in a War Game because it remained undetected because of no radiation signature or signal noise? think i saw a video on it by real engineering...
rigegs ty
The Gotland is awesome. It uses two Stirlings that appeared to fit in a 2-meter cube each. They're powered by diesel fuel and compressed oxygen, cooled by seawater, and the diesel exhaust is compressed on board and retained until it can be safely discharged. It was completely invisible to US anti-submarine assets, both active and passive.
@@robertgoff6479 I find that very unlikely to be invisible to active sonar... I suggest that the crew found a good place to hide in. I don't know what happened in reality I just think that my version is a bit more possible based on what I know (which is something, on how an active sonar work... but close to nothing on the war game that we are talking about)
Just thought I come back to this video: This was the one that hooked me into subscribing to you, and later inspired one of my nation's submarine navies in their subartic seas.Keep up the good work Lloyd!
I do so enjoy your so British calm but enthused way of speaking. A couple of my professors spoke this way and it kept my interest up to pass with rather good grades.
There is actually an automatic teaspoon machine, a Stirring engine.
It'll revolutionize the world.
Well, maybe not, but it'll definitely be a hit in Britain!
I had a clothes washer once that was 31 years old, required little energy and worked perfectly. Couldn't cook very well, though.
why were you cooking with a clothes washer?
matthew hurley Because I thought that she could do more then one thing. :-)
Jeff : Bet you ate a lot of soup.
Because of this and other affiliated videos (we know who) I am currently designing and building my own stirling engine for my course in college.
Thank you, for being an inspiration!
Was it a success?
we used sterling engines for cooling the thermal imaging sensor for our tank night vision cameras around 1987. when you drive the engine from outside it will cool down on one side
My partner and I enjoy your videos during our breakfast. Our kind of nerd beyond words and she is thankful for your content.
This one earned my thumbs up in the first 35 seconds
Its so graceful , ye could watch it all day .
yeah , stick it on a cool can of beer and let the fans cool your face !
But meditate to nothing
If your concentrating on something your not meditating , your concentrating
FlyingAxblade emmm.....yeah , I suppose it would ......But on a scorching day , and you want a cool beer / put it on your can and it could fan your face (for a while )(i think)(maybe)....................
I want Lloyd to muse about the roman dodecahedron
FlyingAxblade I was just searching it , and a chap actually knitted a perfect set of gloves using each hole for the different fingers and the "nodes" were essential to knitting it .
And it makes sense considering most were found in cold Gaul rather than warmer countries .
Theres a vid on him doing it .
I was a bit skeptical at start but when I saw the finished result it was convincing .
FlyingAxblade ill go there then.
But my channels content is varied .
Not sure what youd be looking for .
My brother works building cryostats for universities and institutions around the place , and works one week a month in the IQOQI....but I never knew how to upload the vides he sent me .
One good setup would be focusing sunlight onto the top plate while the bottom plate is submerged in some sort of running stream/river.
If you have a stream you might as well use a water wheel or hydroelectric generator directly. If you have non-running water though it might be a good heatsink.
I had a similar thought, but for residential use. Focus the sun onto the top and have the bottom plate be the lid of a water tank hooked up to the mains. The water will be somewhat warmed in the process, so if you are in a cold place you can get slightly warmer inlet water to your whole home. But if you're in a hot place where you don't want your "cold" water being any hotter than it already is, just use it to pre-warm the water that is going into your water heater. Either way, whenever you use water coming out of the tank it will slightly boost the efficiency of the unit by replacing some of the warmed water with cooler water.
Or alternately you could use the earth as a heat sink.
Wow! This gives me lots of ideas.
First, this might be useful in deserts after all. First of all, it often gets very cold in deserts at night. Water often freezes, which is how sherbet was originally made: fruit juice in the desert was exposed at night, and covered up in blankets to keep it cold in the day. So that made be used to make ice for the engine.
Besides, even in deserts, caves are reasonably cool, if they are deep enough. So an engine would work if it is installed between the surface and a cave, or just a deep enough hole in the ground.
The other idea is that one might reverse the function and use the thing (it would no longer be an engine) to quickly equalize the heat difference when this is required.
Please feel free to spread these ideas.
Thanks.
I love the ideas mentioned here. One thing That I would like to add about it not working well in hot climates, is you may be able to undo that problem a bit, by having water running over the top plate via aqueduct, or just building it on a bank to a water source. It would be most useful, in a wilderness domestic sort of setting.
Also thanks for the great description of how it works. I looked up how they work, and people kept giving conflicting and confusing answers. Most of their answers didn't seem like they would work, so it's nice to finally find one that makes logical sense.
I'm designing and making a stirling engine cryocooler for a senior design course so this was fun to watch.
You have very distinct character and are so interesting to listen to. That being said you remind me very much of John Cleese.
I get what you mean :') Less high pitched than Cleese tho
he reminds me of a highschool history teacher who went through a rough divorce and his wife took everything so now he has to live out of his car, love his vids tho haha
@Joel Smith how are you not embarrassed to use a joke that lame? no originality whatsoever bro
Cleese? Surely Chapman?!
@@kinshaw3086 that is some imagination you got there :)
Lindybeige. The missing Python
Your reference to Brownian Motion (say a nice hot cup of tea) reminded me of the Infinite Improbability Drive from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well done, old chap!
wow good video i had no idea a sterling engine could cure loanliness and depression for 20 mins , thankyou ! basic science is really interesting to me !
From Cody's Lab, this man is hilarious! Subbed
It could work at the equator. Plop the bottom in a lake and paint the top black you,d get a heavy temp difference.
That'd be a useful way to get these working reasonably-well in a hot desert, too. Dig the "cold end" deep underground (where it's cooler) and fill that underground reservoir with water, and maximize the amount of heat on the hot end.
northrupthebandgeek | not really sure about that.. isn’t sand relatively good at insulating? I’d imagine the area below the engine would just heat up and - almost - equalize the temperature after a short while.
@@User_2 Right, but then at night it'll get cooler at the surface and equalize the other way.
Parabolic mirrors aimed at the plate for the heat, the bottom on a lake? WELL done.
At that point you have to ask yourself if the temperature difference between the water and heat from the sun produces more energy for a similarly shaped solar panel. I couldn't tell you the answer, but pointing out that you're trying to use a source of energy that we have already been utilizing.
Bravo, I love it, I add today to my knowledge in mechanics, the counter part of what I was familiar with the electric thermocouples, who can use the differences in temperature to create energy also.
the qeustion is can it power a modified spandau that shoots katanas
god damn it
Only katanas with pommels will do enough dmg to be useful!
But only of those pommels can unscrew
As long as they end them rightly
GEEZ! The damn "BEIGE!" scared the absolute shit out of me!
You could even attach them to standard combustion engines to get extra power from the wasted heat.
Or use a turbocharger to better effect
No. The stirling engine is less effective in carrying heat away from the primary engine than a proper cooler, thus the cool end of the primary engine is not as cool anymore and it loses efficiency. The loss in the primary engine is always greater than what the second engine would produce.
+niffenator An engine with turbochargers are still producing waster heat.
+foobar201 The heat will still have to go somewhere. The cooler can carry the heat away from the engine and to a stirling engine. And it doesn't matter if it can produce energy for all of the lost energy in heat. If it is effective enough to make up for its weight it can add to a more fuel efficient car.
Patrik Lilja ALL heat engines must reject some heat in order to work. A turbocharger can be used to increase the thermal efficiency of the engine however by recovering waste energy from the exhaust.
Yes? So? That is waste energy from the exhaust. The stirling would not interfer with the turbocharger as it will be powered by the waste heat outside of the exhaust.
I'm about halfway through your video, but it may interest you to know that Sterling engines are perfectly viable and are used for spacecraft power generation. They have a fairly decent specific power
Cold is what you feel when the object STEALS your energy to HEAT itself
Like water steals your heat to evaporate which it finds more comfy
Damn you and your elementary education!
Lord Geezmo Well I like to explain things in its elementary form..so all dummies understand :)
I can finally say I'm so hot that it makes things melt!
Ricardo8388 You must be the apex of human intelligence!
"churches don't tend to move around that much."
"traditionally"
You'd think we have stirling engines everywhere here in Canada. So long as the energy produced is greater than the energy lost via heat to the engine. We'll have to install these on our igloos, post haste.
I could put one on my winter coat.
It's not possible to produce more energy than you lose, however you can use the energy that goes to waste otherwise (heat, for example, in a factory).
In the future after ww3 you'll be burning your landfills to make electricity using stirling engines
Don't be ridiculous. Burning landfills just attracts the radioactive megachihuahuas.
All the way from Mexico ?
Thank you for interesting video. Micro cogeneration is still in it's infancy, but these things are slowly coming to residential market.
In my case I am heating my house with natural gas (from pipes, not bottles), which is 3 times cheaper here, compared to electricity. So I started looking in to electricity generation from heat. Found your video.
All is nice, youtube is full of these demonstration units, however I am still to find a working unit at 10kW or so.
You can convert a car engine to burn gas.
@@hermitoldguy6312 Do some calculations :) New engine will fail in one-two years and will need oil changes every week.
@@eIektrinis Nicolaus Otto was making gas engines in the 1860's (hence the Otto cycle).
@@hermitoldguy6312 I run my car on gas, too. But it's not the same as 24/7 operation.
Interesting timing. I'm currently half assing my way through an engineering class where we design, build, measure and rapport on a stirling engine. Needless to say I don't recommend trying to design your own thing, without the proper workshop skills ;)
Sokar maybe you can tell me why powerplants use steam turbines and not Sterling engines?
Steam engines that are big are more powerful. You can get very high pressure steam, but the pressure difference you get from chilling air just isn't as great.
Would a fireplace on one side and riverwater on the other be a good enough gradient for a sterling engine?
*Lindybeige* Why we can't turn heat or nuclear reaction to electricity directly with 100% efficiency by now? THE FUTURE SHOULD BE HERE BY NOW, WTF!
That was really neat, I came from Cody's Lab. Now back to his video. Thanks for the information, it was really neat.
You've mentioned two shit bands in this episode, One direction and Cold plate.
Thumbs up for the wordplay
Vito C Coldplay wordplay no less. :-)
Wow, he actually used the phrase,"Brownian motion!" Magnificent! Bravo! What's next? Boyle's Law? Keep up the good work pal!
Love that transition
Wow, I never knew lindy could make a video of only 30 seconds.
You forgot to talk about the easiest version to make, "The PC heat sinks" They don't require any mechanical moving parts like Stirling Engine but work on same principle. Putting out more watts depending on difference between plate and other side. Of course intended to cool the CPU it can be removed from an old computer then used to make electricity. But it's nice to see the old technology.
saw this recommended for weeks and i avoided it because I thught it would be one of those crappy informal videos that just shows off something I already know exists. This was a million times more informative and interesting. Well done
Cody sent me here
Aden Cox same
Yep
Aden Cox same
Aden Cox me to
Aden Cox same
and it was in a blackened saucepan, I would've liked the video, but did you see the state of his saucepans
mike n He's made a video on it.
That was the joke
use that blackened saucepan of yours to do a facepalm mate....
a facepan...
awful. horrible sauce pan maintenance. his family should be ashamed
Since this is an engineering video, the black residue means that his range is burning it's fuel inefficiently. A well designed gas stoved, working properly should give off nothing but clean blue flame.
Because of this, Lloyd's utility bill is a little higher than needs be, but the marginal cost is probably too small to justify a new range.
was really thinking that the video was going to be 40 seconds long.
Please consider the irony of measuring Sterling Engine output in Watts, the inventor of the reciprocating steam engine.
It makes sense
On a different note:
Don't you feel like these engines could be viable when there is a great difference in temperature like magma in antarctica.
Then again when you try to do that you will inevitably heat up the surrounding air.
Maybe in a different planet. One in where it is -45°C. Can be also used to heat up the planet.
We could create a new unit, pounds Stirling - feet per second.
Anyone all of a sudden want one?
Jacob Gourley, want one? I just bought one!
Jacob Gourley Vsauce.
is the chamber with the displacement disc ... air sealed?
Jacob Gourley I just got one
£20 off banggood
This has me contemplating something for a fantasy setting where some enterprising spellcaster/engineer figures out a way to place gates to the Elemental Plane of Fire and the Elemental Plane of Water on opposite sides of a massive Stirling frame in order to power a death ray.
That'd be great, actually.
Solemn Howler why not just trap air elemental in VAWTs?
assuming magic that violates physical principles and machines that rely on those physical principles means that it is almost always a trivial exercise to create perpetual motion or over unity engines in fantasy settings... as a writer and creator i find it much more interesting to try and explain why they have not been created already, as otherwise every fantasy setting undergoes a magitech based industrial revolution as soon as you start applying common sense engineering.
Keep a lobotomised dragon on top of one?
That sounds pretty awesome
This would be perfect for some place like Arizona. Just bury some kind of thermal conducting anchor into the ground at say 5 or 6 feet, have it touching the bottom plate and then wait for the air temperature to either rise significantly above or sink below that.
I just saw that you said it would be BAD for places that are warm....but but but....why can't you just anchor it to a thermal conducting material buried deep under ground?
if you dig a good 4 feet down, even in Arizona, the temperature drops down into the 60s virtually year round.
So in the summer, you would have a top plate at the temperature of the air (say 100 degrees) and the bottom plate would continue absorbing heat and dissipating it into the ground.
Freddy Fred. the ground in the area will eventually become heat soaked.
Sun powered water pumps for Africa/middle east anybody?
Exactly. If the main factor driving RPM on a sterling motor with a flywheel is the difference in temp between the top plate and the bottom plate, then simply pivot from one to the other when the air temperature differs significantly from the ground temperature.
That is one of the fundamental uses for Stirling engines, BITD. They were made & sold in a couple of small sizes for farm use [around a century ago, when most farms were still wood-fueled and having a small portable engine that ran on wood was a desirable thing.] The killing stroke for Stirling engines [originally, two centuries ago, and again 100 years ago] is that of materials science: being able to manufacture the engines out of materials that could withstand the high temperatures required, etc. Which just so happens to be one of the areas engineering has made HUGE strides in over the last century [not so much in the preceding 100 years.] So yes, Stirlings are overdue for a rebirth, esp. as people are struggling to de-urbanize & "get off the grid."
"What is a Stirling Engine?"
- Loydboy: Well... this is!
Directed by George Lucas
Just spit-balling here, but what if you used liquid nitrogen in hot-climates? If I'm understanding correctly, then it's the temperature GRADIENT that causes the engine to work, so in places like, say, Saudi Arabia (or similarly hot climates) wouldn't the temperature gradient between the natural heat and the nitrogen should be enough to power, say, a locomotive or something similar that you could mount them on in numbers for individual axels. Again, just a thought experiment; Great vid Lindy
Id guess that it work really really fast for a very short time .
Or maybe longer if ye had a custom made nitrogen container (insulated and slow release etc etc )
Of course, it would take some trial and error to some degree but I feel that the information we have about the system is at least proof of concept enough to warrant its trials. I like projects, so I'm a tad biased ^_^ cheers
IWILLMAKEYOUASKQUESTIONS
The only problem are the B**tard oil companies that dont want free energy (or inexpensive energy )
The energy to create the liquid nitrogen would far outweigh the benefits of this.
Anders Fredriksson would that not depend how long it lasted ?
I mean youd only need a tiny stream of it at a time ?
Stirlings are inefficient because they operate at low temperature differentials. Ford and Philips jointly developed Sirling engines in the 1960s-Ford put one in a Falcon car-it was twice the weight and half the power of the gasoline engine. Philips developed Stirling generators to power vacuum tube radios-transistors made that application obsolete.
hmmmm check that again compared to ICE they exceed the efficiencies of ICE -ideal models can't achieve the 50% conversion of thermal energy to kinetics but utilization of thermal energy far exceeds
ICE - in fact several large Sterling engines can be found in submarines for backup and electrical power...
people confuse efficiency and power density. efficiency is limited by temperature difference eff= 1-(Th/Tc) is the maximum efficiency. That is the Carnot efficiency, and a Stirling can get as close to that as anything else can, maybe closer. Power density is how much power / volume or how much power / weight. A Stirling engine is high efficiency, low power density. There is one in Japan (Ecoboy?) that produces 1Kw from waste heat at a 100C temperature difference. But the engine weighs about 1000kg. Not a lot of power for a lot of mass, but most other engines can't utilize that waste heat, and the ones that can require special working fluids, like freon or propane, that can be hazardous if they leak.
You do not have to go to Antarctica but look at the geothermal pools in Iceland. Iceland it self can be a bit chilly too.
True, but then, Iceland have some nice geothermal power plants as well. :)
then the question would be, what is more efficient, using stirling engines or the turbine generators most geothermal plants use
You would have the same question with Antarctica, but Iceland would be closer and less expensive to run test.
Why not both? Don't geothermal plants also have wasted heat? What if this was attached near the exhaust portion of the plant, and it could capture/use some of that waste to provide even more electricity at only the cost of construction and maintenance. Now, is this cost efficient/economical at a municipal level. But that's something they'd have to investigate if they were to implement these.
Terry Endicott yes but the also have letters like þ and đ.
You present science very, very well. Like the 1970’s BBC open university programmes of my youth. You have a new subscriber and I’ll share with my friends.
So, we could run a massive-ass sterling engine on top of the plutonium and uranium baths to produce energy as well instead of just wasting water?
Also, do these produce a lot of condensation?
NarpytheCrimeDog he explains all of this in the video, the stirling uses cold and heat to create motion, so i really don't understand what that has to do with uranium and plutonium baths, a place where people put the used materials from a nuclear power plant so that the radiation doesnt cause everybody in the area to get radiation sickness and long term radiation caused damage (like cancerous cells)
Issue with that would be that the reactors are designed to use the water baths as safety mechanisms. But yes, and it'd look a hell of a lot nicer than a typical nuclear power plant too. A steampunk monstrosity rather than an ugly concrete one.
farmerboy916 really? i find nuclear power plant cooling towers to have a certain industrial look to them, if you just imagine that all the water vapor is smoke from heavy machinery
yo boi jonx
I mean yeah, but they have the downside of having had an aura of fear built up around them. Plus, people tend to like the industrial look in some circumstances but it increases the "not in my backyard" effect.
If you had that you would still need some kind of fluid to make that trade of heat, water or air, you would still to have fluid. And imagine the air going out of that engine, it would be full of water radioactive vapor.
actually, the Antarctic idea is pretty good, Lindy. The center of the earth has a lot of radiation heating and it is set to last for millions of years. Unless we do some very stupid things to the earth, the Antarctic will always be incredibly cold as heat radiates out of the Antarctic.
it won't heat up the Antarctic because the heat will just radiate into the sun. It's the trapping of that radiation that leads to all kinds of climate change. Simply moving raw kinetic energy into the Arctic won't change anything unless it is on a scale that would fry the earth.
There's a particularly good place for it: Mount Erebus is a volcano in antarctica. Extreme heat and extreme cold, all in one place.
Well, yes, but we don't actually use much energy in Antarctica. I think you'll find transporting the energy to anywhere useful to be somewhat of a hassle.
Absurdist then just move some industries to Antarctica.
Equal opportunity means a job for every penguin!
You know, there may very well be a reason why this wouldn't work that I'm overlooking because I literally just woke up... but I wonder if these things could be used in space. Because the difference in temperature between things facing the Sun and things facing away from the Sun is pretty extreme. So you have one side facing the Sun that gets very hot and the other side facing away that stays very cool. Probably couldn't be used for any kind of propulsion, but I wonder if it would be more efficient than solar panels. Biggest problem I see is whether or not the vacuum of space can transfer the heat well enough, I have a feeling that is where this falls apart. Well, back to my coffee.
Fiete, now there is a fine question. I could be wrong but I don't think any weight is moving the flywheel but rather a... thermal pressure differential? That's a shit explanation.
Once again I literally just woke up.
@@czarpeppers6250 this wouldn't work for anything small floating around in space, precisely for the reason you guessed. The sun would heat one side, and get the engine started. The inertia from the flywheel would keep it going, regardless of any gravitational pull. But the vacuum of space doesn't contain any molecules that transfer heat away from the engine, meaning that the temperature difference would equalize pretty fast.
It would however work great as a stationary power plant on a planet/asteroid without an atmosphere, as long as the bottom plate was connected to a big heat sink that transfers heat underground. If we assume that the ground transfers heat similarly to the ground here on earth, you could basically keep the engine running until the entire planet/asteroid was heated up, which should be longer than the engine will stay together, provided a constant stream of sunlight.
Also, with an efficiency close to 50 %, this should be a lot more cost-effective than solar panels. There are solar panel combinations that have a combined efficiency over 50 %, but they cost a fortune. The Stirling engine is a much simpler construction, which should make it the cheaper option. On the other hand, you would want to make big engines in small quantities, meaning that each engine failure would mean a huge power loss. A large solar plant usually consists of thousands of small panels, meaning one broken panel won't affect the overall power production that much.
Those are the pros and cons I can list off the top of my head. In summary, it should work as a stationary unit just about anywhere, and it might be cheaper than solar power, but it should also be less reliable.
Sincerely,
Someone who is about to finish an energy engineering degree.
+Improbabilities Yeaaaaah, I had a feeling the vacuum would be an issue, but not being completely versed in the science I was 100% sure.
Thanks for the response and other information though, interesting read. It is a shame that the Stirling engine isn't something that is considered more these days, one thing I would love is something like a electric generator Stirling engine that used a wood stove for heat. Because power goes out quite a bit where I live and we always have a lot of wood. I have seen Stirling generators online, but they always seem to use propane or something similar for heat.
There is a dude that made one for satalites
I like this idea and have theories of my own. As long as you used a sealed chamber with some atmosphere/gas in it to allow proper heat transfer, you could have high surface area fins radiate excess heat on the shade side. The difference between sun and shadow is roughly 300C which sounds workable. As for Improbabilities, the notion that there is no heat transfer in space is patently false. There is no significant convection or conduction but heat still radiates. The biggest concern would be heat/light sources on the other side of the engine with celestial bodies reflecting significant amounts of radiation. I believe this to be feasible but I am concerned that the flywheels would cause drift unless you balanced them against each other properly. Would still need fuel for positioning thrusters to maintain alignment
Just to be pedantic, I think the two plates will be aluminium as it conduct heat better than steel, whereas the separating rods between hot and cold plates will be stainless steel as it conducts heat much less. Great video!
Heat engines as this one are not very efficient. They are limited by thermodynamic limit of efficiency, called the carnot efficiency. Moreover that theoretical maximum efficiency can only be achieved at zero power output.
The more power you want, the farther away from the carnot efficiency the engine gets.
Electric engines don't have these problems, because they don't run on expanding gases and temperature differences.
It's weird that people are suddenly touting this as the technology to solve our energy problems, given those facts. We abandoned this long ago except in novelties for a reason, that reason being we found something more powerful.
Nieroshai I don't see it as a way to advance, I see it as a way to achieve small scale subsistence off the grid... or just as a stepping stone if civilization broke down.
One can make a lathe from scratch with salvaged materials.
I sure as hell can't build a new solar panel from scratch, but use a parabolic antenna coated in reflective tape to power a Stirling engine made from a bucket of scraps? I could try.
All engines are heat engines and Sterling are the most efficient at any given temperature variant. But have other drawbacks.
+misium
Stirling engines are low-tech easy to made and easy to maintain solution for renewable energy. To make solar panels you need a high-tech know-how and expensive materials, if you brake a solar panel it is done, you can not fix it.
As such it might be a good idea to use stirling engine generators in 3rd world countries. For example instead of sending them solar panels we could help them build factories making stirling generators.
I don't understand why are you mentioning electric engines, the video was about using waste heat for powering things. We are not discussing stirling powered cars, we are discussing how to charge batteries of electric cars with stirling engines.
The only way that we can generate energy without heat engines right now is using solar panels and wind/water turbines (and maybe peltier cells, which are less efficient that Stirling engines).
misium You need to get that electricity first. Which we usually do by making something spin and hooking a generator on it. Something like a heat engine.
It's just a heat engine, not unlike a reverse version of your refrigerator or your air conditioner. This could actually be quite useful, particularly in the grounds of an engine powered by night. Yes, night. In many parts of the world (particularly the desert), the ground is cooler than the air in the day and warmer than the air in the night. Hook up a sterling engine to that temperature gradient, and you have an engine that works simply by placing it on the ground.
Alexander Abrams-Flohr but the sand would probably damage it making it need a lot of upkeep
they are sealed chambers
Well done. Stirling engines aren't free energy, but they can be used to re-purpose waste energy.
Thanks to your excellent explanation, I FINALLY understood the theory of a Sterling motor, thank you very much for that!!
then one day, Sterlingpunk!
xD
Lol
I actually wrote a story a few years ago about a goblin city powered by a massive Stirling engine.
Underground aqueducts passed water over the cold side. The warmed water then flowed through a huge, city with parabolic solar array which brought it up to supercritical temperatures to power the hot side. The flywheel, located beneath the city, was so large the engine could be completely shut down for a week and it would still be spinning enough to generate power.
it is more efficient to use waste heat from servers to power a heat exchange to heat houses.
Daniil Pintjuk which is happening. though I wouldn't be surprised you wouldn't lose a lot even if you did use them in a server farm so you could both
Daniil Pintjuk the nice thing of using stirling engines in your server farm is that they naturally provide a feedback system to keep a constant temperature. If you use the engines to power the refrigerators you get a nice trick:
- if the servers get exceedingly hot, the temperature difference grows and so does the power output of the engine, cooling the servers down again.
- if they get too cold, the engines slow down, and the temperature goes back up.
Xavi Ondoño is getting too cold a problem for a server farm?
If the server farm is using water to disperse the heat more efficiently, then yes
Could you not potentialy use a PH neutral liquid with much higher boiling and much lower freezing points than water? Not that i know of one atm, but in theory.
I loved this! I had no idea that a Stirling Engine existed. Very impressive, Great Britain, very impressive indeed.
This is like an updated "Secret Life of Machines"! Love it, nice work.
now and then I come back here just to watch the first 20 seconds again
Is there any issue in the long term for durability with the components rapidly changing from hot to cold and back again?
There is one thing that has kept these things as toys: The low thermal conductivity of air. In order to operate the working air inside the machine must be heated up, and cooled down. The air gets it's heat and looses it's heat by the contact between the air and the heat sinks that make up the chambers. But because air is an insulator, the only air that heats quickly is the air in close contact to the walls of the chamber. So, the smaller the chamber, the faster the unit can cycle. Some engines have used hydrogen or helium as the gas because it is more conductive.
The other item is the air pressure. If the whole apparatus is taken up in pressure, the amount of force exerted by the heating and cooling becomes greater. So, if you want to get a higher power density out of one of these, you want it to be very small, at very high pressure. If you do that, the next difficulty is keeping one chamber hot, and the other chamber cold by external heat transfer.
So there you have it, a tiny high efficiency sterling engine with a high power density. Then the only problem left is making it big. by duplicating a lot of them to run a common shaft. And a lot of shaft assemblies to get the power up even higher.
In fact, a Sterling engine was once developed under government funding, and given to the auto companies, but the auto companies declined to put it into production.
Use geothermal activity to heat water, use the hot water to heat the cold plate, and just water cool the top plate. Ideally you could probably just power a turbine off geothermal energy all the same
There are many industrial Stirling engines being used even now.
@@MrSpaceRatt There was a US government sponsored sterling engine for autos. It worked, but the auto industry did not want to use it. Can you show one actual Stirling engine in use?
@@tedrees5989 , this company builds industrial Stirling engines: www.sunpowerinc.com/
@@tedrees5989 www.okofen-e.com/en/pellet_boiler/
Lindy's introductory video on thermodynamics. Can't wait until the video on the refrigeration cycle!
thats a realy nice object of engeniering you have there. i think about what would happen if you combine the sirling engine with some type of the Archimedes mirror. this way you could get a wayyyy greater temperature difference. about 600-2000 °c. only powered by the sun. on the other hand i would use a water pipe system to store energy via gravity & heat.
I feel like Iceland would be the ideal place for these.
Antartica is to far away from the possible users (apart from the research stations there), the energy loss due to distance would be to great. Iceland has the needed heat and cold and the heat is already in use there for energy. The infrastructure already exists.
I agree w/you that Iceland is indeed the best place for large scale Stirling engine use.
It stopped running at 5:30 , because no
too cold, if both sides of the plates are cold nothing happens. didn't you listen?
Bullshit !! Iceland is full of hot geysers and free geothermal energy underground and it's cold outside. Sir Billius is 100% right!
That's one long closing card.
I watched this video a long time ago, i have to assume at some point near when it came out, and i still to this day will quote the first several seconds if someone mentions a stirling engine or asks what a complicated thing is
I like this video a lot
Water power rigs, Stirlingly combing the Stirling Stirling engine, electrolysis of sea water, wind solar and tidal power. The rig would be a tidal power rig with a Stirling engine mounted on the side along with wind and solar on the roof all powering electrolysis of sea water producing a 2 part hydrogen and 1 part oxygen gasous mix which then can be ignited in a piston actuating a flywheel which rotating a magnet around a copper coil producing electric current which charges a capacitor that gets shipped back to land along with pure water. Obviously any excess power produced would charge the capacitor as well.
Any thoughts?
The electrolysis bit is a little redundant. You could just send the electrical energy generated by the solar, wind and tidal back to the land directly. Electrolysis is also very energy inefficient so you'd be wasting a lot of power, and performing electrolysis on sea water will produce some very nasty byproducts such as chlorine gas.
25 seconds in, and I'm up voting.
Wouldn't these be perfect in the desert? You have the engine under ground, and a large bay filled with enclosed water so it wont evaporate. During the day it is heated and pushes heat down to the engine, cooler temperature underground causes the temperature difference. During the night the temperature is extremely low but underground always has the same temperature so the engine would spin the other way.
I meant the engine is underground, the water is on the surface but enclosed. Think of it like a greenhouse or a bottle of water (or some other liquid that heats up easily, doesn't have to be air or water if there is something else better suited). So the water would heat up in the greenhouse during the day and cool down during the night. Then some pipes would lead to the engine, kinda like a steam engine I suppose.
The sterling engine would just heat up/cool down the ground in its vicinity to the air temperature and after that point it would stop working since its fueled by the difference in temprature.
The reason it works on for example submarines is as lindy pointed out, you got a continues flow of water that cools it down, -you move away from the heated water.
However using sterling engines in geotermical powerplants is a differen't matter, since you have two active temprature sources, geotermal and cold air.
There are solar powered Stirling engines, uses mirror(s) to focus sunlight to create enough heat for engine to work.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-powered_Stirling_engine
3dprint.com/54456/solar-powered-stirling-engine/
You would heat up the ground very quickly and the temperature difference would very quickly diminish until you cannot power the stirling anymore. Unless you can get a reliable temperature differential, there's no point in installing a stirling engine.
The Question is how long would it take for the Stirling engine to equalize the temperatures? Lets say 5 Hours. Then the Engine would work the first 5 Hours after Sunrise und the first 5 Hours after sunset, so 10 Hours per day. Compare this to a solar panel, which works 12 Hours per day. The Question now is produces the Stirling engine in this time more energy than the solarpanel?
Another Question is: What do you want with this energy in the middle of a desert? The Transport of Energy is a really big Problem and you use a lot of energy while doing that. So it might be more efficient to build the engine near to the consumer even if the efficency of the engine itself is not as high as in the middle of a desert.
Fantastic presenting style! As a non-scientist with no interest whatsoever in mechanical engineering, I've just subscribed!