Stirling engine

A Stirling engine, named after Robert Stirling, clergyman and inventor of what he called an "air engine", is a type of engine that creates a time-phase relationship between hot and cold temperatures to move a piston, that is harnessed to provide power. Patented in 1816, Stirling's engines couldn't explode (unlike steam engines) and produced more power than the steam engines of the time. Stirling engines are also used as a fast cooling device, using a motor to move the piston making the engine very cold.

From a new (1998) patent by John Kerwin, Dean Kamen, and others:

A Stirling machine having two pistons coupled to a harmonic crank drive linkage for providing a specified phase relationship between sinusoidal displacements of each piston with respect to a fixed fiducial point. The harmonic crank drive linkage has a primary crankshaft and an eccentric crankshaft mounted internally to the primary crankshaft and coupled via a gear set to counterrotate with respect to the primary crankshaft. The eccentric crankshaft may be cantilevered with respect to the primary shaft, with the pistons of the engine coupled to the eccentric crankshaft externally to the supporting bearings. A flywheel coupled to the eccentric crankshaft provides for operation of the engine with a zero net angular momentum. [Zero net angular momentum would be very handy for a vehicle that had to balance on two wheels. It also is a good way to reduce vibration and make the engine easier to control.-bhv] An intake manifold provides for mixing air and fuel for combustion heating of the engine.

External links

Indexes

• Stirling engine combustor research at Lund Institute of Technology (with index)
• Google: Stirling Engines; DMOZ: Stirling Engines
• Web archive: Sun Power vejviser
• Red Rock Energy Solar Heliostats: This is the start of Will's Stirling engine links
• Adam's place > projects > stirling engines
• Robert Sier: Stirling Engine and Hot Air Engine
• Webring: Home > Hobbies & Crafts > Models, Stirling and Hot Air Engine Ring

How it works

• How Stuff Works: Stirling-engine
• University of Canterbury: An introduction to Stirling-cycle machines (PDF), Stirling-Cycle Research Group
• About The Stirling Heat Engine
• (Good information to builders:) Why Aviation Needs the Stirling Engine by Darryl Phillips, main address, mirror Quote: "...This 4-part series appeared in the March 1993 through March 1994 issues of Stirling Machine World...Common four cylinder engines such as Lycoming and Continental show torque that varies from a negative 100% to a positive 350% of the nominal torque...A Stirling with the same number of cylinders and identical horsepower has a torque variation of +/- 5%!..."
• Stirling fly motor animation
• Israel Urieli: Stirling Engine Simple Analysis, main address, Alpha Stirlings, Beta Stirlings, Gamma Stirlings
• Peter Fette: Stirling Engine Research and Computer (simulation) Programm Development, animation, prozess, mirror
• Quote: "...One possibility of equalizing the regenerators loss in double acting engines is to design it as a counterflow heatexchanger as described in [1..."]
• Quote: "...This Stirling Engine with 8 cylinders is twice double acting. Its special highlight is the facility for the heat transfer from a liquid [eg. water] to the working fluid [eg. air] which results in extremely low temperature losses....Because of the nearly isothermalized heat transfer the efficiency is near carnot's ..."
• Amitabha Mukerjee: Stirling Engine, usage, How does it work? Quote: "...As a final note a solar powered stirling engine coupled with a generator achieved a record solar-to-electric efficiency of 30%!..."

Information media

• Stirling Machine World SMW
• Stirling News is published quarterly in the UK by The Stirling Engine Society
• More Stirling News papers, Search for "Stirling News" on this page
• 10th Stirling Engine Conference 2001 ISEC

Do-It-Yourself model Stirling/Hot-Air maskiner

• Simple Do-It-Yourself Stirling motor, links Only requires a temperature difference on 8°C to run. A hot hand and/or a cold iscube is enough to keep it running.
• Koichi Hirata: Welcome to Stirling Engine Home Page
• Adresse til: Stirling Engine Home Page at National Maritime Research Institute
• Test-Tube Stirling Engine
• Web archive mirror, Melbourne Society of Model & Experimental Engineers Journal: A Novel Stirling Cycle Hot Air Engine To Build

Applications

• Ecoliving: Homegrown micropower has macro prospects
• Home-scale generators, Micro Combined Heat and Power MCHP
• Power Producing Engines - American Stirling Company
• Stirling Technology, Inc.-- The leader in energy recovery ventilator technology
• Stirling Cryogenics & Refrigeration BV, SPC: Stirling Process Cryogenerator, SGL: The Stirling gas liquefier, StirLIN: Stirling liquid nitrogen production plants, StirLOX: Stirling liquid oxygen production plants, Power Coolers
• The Stirling and Miller-Cycle Engines Quote: "...The main advantage of the Stirling engine is that it is remarkably efficient. It extracts up to 50 percent of the possible mechanical energy contained in the fuel it uses, compared to a high of about 25 percent for a standard internal combustion engine (ICE)..."