"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.
@@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.
@@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...
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.
@@yetanother9127 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."
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.
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)
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.
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.
@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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.!
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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 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.
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!
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...
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)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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'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
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
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
I've been thinking about that server in Finland. Do you think a Stirling Engine could power a cooling fan? What about an electrical generator? Yeah! It powers a generator that runs the server that powers the Stirling engine that ... BAD ME BAD ME! * walks off to the blackboard to write "There is no such thing as perpetual motion or energy" 100 times..
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 .
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.
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.
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.
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."
blazednlovinit some truth in that .... the components of a car with no engine, could be developed even in ancient times ..... in the same sense the body is energy is burned at the brain!
Ideally, when the room gets hot enough, that powers the generator to operate the central air, and if it's cold, that can power an opposite, separately calibrated engine to generate heat. I'm sure it wouldn't work, but gosh wouldn't that be fun.
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.
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 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
Submarines! Our Swedish Gotland-class submarine is so stealthy USA use them for war games with their aircraft carriers. *Edit: made comment before finishing the video
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.
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.
I was running a demonstration Stirling/generator tonight and I measured its power at around 30 mW, and that was with much greater temperature difference (flame vs. room). So the Stirling he's running must be something less than 1 mW I would think.
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!
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.
you could expose the hot side of a Stirling engine to direct sunlight and submerge the cold side in the collection tank of an artesian well. Then you could use it to drive your water pump.
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
Since an Artesian aquifer is under pressure, drilling the well in a place where the water will be able to exit the well with its own pressure would require no pump. Just sayin
Sterling engines produce very little power compared to their size. As he said in the video you'd need a house sized engine compared to what a small 2-stroke can do.
You are right kind of(most don't have artesian wells, they are just normal wells, Just don't use a small Stirling engine. But then you would need to constantly change mediums depending on the season. liquid nitrogen in summer and a simple water heater for winter would be sufficient. Why is that bloke typing in caps? he may have a point, but i am not reading that, that's the equivalent of yelling. This is a scientific thought process, perhaps they should speak in a way that doesn't diminish others. And Oil Lease, You are wrong, well sort of. ar·te·sian relating to or denoting a well bored perpendicularly into water-bearing strata lying at an angle, so that natural pressure produces a constant supply of water with little or no pumping. a tiny Stirling engine could be exactly what a artesian well would need. When i lived in Texas, And our power would go out. We could not get water from our wells. Over use drastically reduces the water level in said strata(or aquifer) To the point you need to have a pump powered by electricity. If the well is recently dug, it shouldn't require pumps, but if its old it most definitely needs pumps. the real problem is everything thinks of wells as always artesian, when that word only infers what angle the water in the strata are angled at.
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.
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.
+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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
Awesome video! Question: If the tops of people's houses living in cold environments was covered with these.. how much power could they throw back into the system compared to the power being used to keep themselves warm in their home?
Not as much as the roofs of houses in hot, tropical environments close to the equator. Quite simply, you put power *into* a Stirling to create a "heat pump" in order to concentrate heat inside your super-insulated home in that sort of environment, instead of trying to cool your already chilly home further in the attempt to generate the fraction of a horsepower needed to run a sewing machine. Stirling engines are still heat engines: ie, they work by extracting power from the movement of hot -> cold in a regime where a differential exists. Most of the time, we have to create that differential by burning fuel. Sometimes it exists naturally, like the someplace that receives a great amount of sunlight. And the absolutely last thing we want to do is accelerate the rate at which heat we've had to pay for to provide a warm environment slips away into the winter air by trying to run a Stirling engine off our house! Let me guess, your parents are still paying the bills, aren't they? ;-)
Nunya Bidniz I was referring to houses in snowy places, like Russia, Canada, Greenland, etc. Usually most of the heat inside of a home is concentrated toward the ceiling. Just curious how much of the energy can be salvaged.
That would not be as efficient as just properly insulating your home. The Stirling engine would effectively be like an open widow. Sure it will generate some power but by using it you're still letting heat out of your home instead of keeping it inside.
Similar to the Antarctic example it should work nicely. Essentially you're describing a geothermal power plant, just one that happens to use the Stirling cycle.
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.
Technically ideal but practicall not ideal :) Since they already produce more geothermal energy than they even use :) No point in making even more. They get steam for free, so might as well run steam turbines, it's more efficient than Stirling engine. But yes, practical and useful if they connected Iceland to Europe and started selling clean, renewable energy!
If someone ever develops a good way to store electricity (batteries are not all that great), Iceland will probably top using the thermal energy to farm tomatoes (they actually have greenhouses with tomatoes there) and start producing batteries.
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.
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.
I want to see a Gamma Stirling Engine that uses a compost heap as a heat source, and a stream as a cold source. A well tended compost heap produces about 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and streams can be in the 30's to 50's Fahrenheit.
"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...
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
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]
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.
@@yetanother9127 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
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
"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.
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.
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.
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
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.
“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.
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.
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 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.!
"From flywheel to good!"
Lindybeige-2k16
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.
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.
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 :)
This could well be the most interesting video I've seen on TH-cam.
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!
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. :-)
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 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.
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)
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.
That transition to the trying something hot segment. Was not expecting that and I busted out laughing.
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!
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.
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
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'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
Lindybeige. The missing Python
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 :)
"churches don't tend to move around that much."
"traditionally"
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!
Cody sent me here
Aden Cox same
Yep
Aden Cox same
Aden Cox me to
Aden Cox same
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.
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?
"What is a Stirling Engine?"
- Loydboy: Well... this is!
Directed by George Lucas
I thought the video had ended 24 seconds in. Great job, it made me laugh more than I should have.
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.
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.
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.
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 !
GEEZ! The damn "BEIGE!" scared the absolute shit out of me!
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.
@@circuitdotlt 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.
Love that transition
From Cody's Lab, this man is hilarious! Subbed
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
I've been thinking about that server in Finland. Do you think a Stirling Engine could power a cooling fan? What about an electrical generator? Yeah! It powers a generator that runs the server that powers the Stirling engine that ...
BAD ME BAD ME!
* walks off to the blackboard to write "There is no such thing as perpetual motion or energy" 100 times..
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!
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
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 .
You are VERY SMART and brilliant man. GOD BLESS YOU !!!
Wow, I never knew lindy could make a video of only 30 seconds.
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
I'm designing and making a stirling engine cryocooler for a senior design course so this was fun to watch.
Churches don't move around much?
Someone never been to a black church here in the South.
True that.
Ah don geht it
@@deltoroperdedor3166 the gospel singers love dancing and putting soul into their prayers
@@deltoroperdedor3166 They're very uppity and rowdy.
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 ?
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.
That's one long closing card.
Is there any issue in the long term for durability with the components rapidly changing from hot to cold and back again?
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."
Integrate it into a hat, it can be brain powered!
and you will have to think a lot .... to create heat .... heh -_-
Abdul Gemayyel I've heard before that the brain uses something like 1/3rd of the energy requirements for our bodies. :)
blazednlovinit some truth in that .... the components of a car with no engine, could be developed even in ancient times ..... in the same sense the body is energy is burned at the brain!
It's more like about a fifth.
Ideally, when the room gets hot enough, that powers the generator to operate the central air, and if it's cold, that can power an opposite, separately calibrated engine to generate heat. I'm sure it wouldn't work, but gosh wouldn't that be fun.
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
My partner and I enjoy your videos during our breakfast. Our kind of nerd beyond words and she is thankful for your content.
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 ?
Submarines! Our Swedish Gotland-class submarine is so stealthy USA use them for war games with their aircraft carriers.
*Edit: made comment before finishing the video
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.
1 Watt!!! - in your dreams mate! More like 1 microwatt!
I was running a demonstration Stirling/generator tonight and I measured its power at around 30 mW, and that was with much greater temperature difference (flame vs. room). So the Stirling he's running must be something less than 1 mW I would think.
I thought those sterling engines on aircraft were quite loud… oh wait, those were Merlin engines… 🙄
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!
Most british engine engine ever. YOu can power it by tea and it works better in worse weather. :D
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.
you could expose the hot side of a Stirling engine to direct sunlight and submerge the cold side in the collection tank of an artesian well. Then you could use it to drive your water pump.
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
Since an Artesian aquifer is under pressure, drilling the well in a place where the water will be able to exit the well with its own pressure would require no pump. Just sayin
Sterling engines produce very little power compared to their size. As he said in the video you'd need a house sized engine compared to what a small 2-stroke can do.
You are right kind of(most don't have artesian wells, they are just normal wells, Just don't use a small Stirling engine. But then you would need to constantly change mediums depending on the season. liquid nitrogen in summer and a simple water heater for winter would be sufficient.
Why is that bloke typing in caps? he may have a point, but i am not reading that, that's the equivalent of yelling. This is a scientific thought process, perhaps they should speak in a way that doesn't diminish others.
And Oil Lease, You are wrong, well sort of. ar·te·sian
relating to or denoting a well bored perpendicularly into water-bearing strata lying at an angle, so that natural pressure produces a constant supply of water with little or no pumping. a tiny Stirling engine could be exactly what a artesian well would need.
When i lived in Texas, And our power would go out. We could not get water from our wells. Over use drastically reduces the water level in said strata(or aquifer) To the point you need to have a pump powered by electricity. If the well is recently dug, it shouldn't require pumps, but if its old it most definitely needs pumps.
the real problem is everything thinks of wells as always artesian, when that word only infers what angle the water in the strata are angled at.
@@davidross5770 You could use it as a calendar.
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.
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.
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.
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
Well done. Stirling engines aren't free energy, but they can be used to re-purpose waste energy.
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!
now and then I come back here just to watch the first 20 seconds again
But what if you strapped a sniper rifle to it?
Can it end my opponents as rightly as a pommel?
THESE QUESTIONS NEED ANSWERING!
now if we use the barrel of a spandau as the hot end......
"A stirling engine could even power a aircraft!!!"
*stirling engine abruptly stops*
"..."
why arent these things used? that's probably why lol
They're actually extremely reliable and low maintenance engines, just not the toy versions.
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!
Iceland ! Probably the best country for temperature difference in the air and ground. Hot volcanic rocks and freezing temperatures most of the year.
If Trump hears that he'll want to buy it.
Actually Greenland would work work better, as it is covered with ice
@@local38on-tv Has Greenland got the volcanic actiity Mr SNO ?
Diabolical Machines ! What the World needs more of, now !
@@local38on-tv I gather that Greenland will soon join the Union
Awesome video! Question: If the tops of people's houses living in cold environments was covered with these.. how much power could they throw back into the system compared to the power being used to keep themselves warm in their home?
Not as much as the roofs of houses in hot, tropical environments close to the equator. Quite simply, you put power *into* a Stirling to create a "heat pump" in order to concentrate heat inside your super-insulated home in that sort of environment, instead of trying to cool your already chilly home further in the attempt to generate the fraction of a horsepower needed to run a sewing machine. Stirling engines are still heat engines: ie, they work by extracting power from the movement of hot -> cold in a regime where a differential exists. Most of the time, we have to create that differential by burning fuel. Sometimes it exists naturally, like the someplace that receives a great amount of sunlight. And the absolutely last thing we want to do is accelerate the rate at which heat we've had to pay for to provide a warm environment slips away into the winter air by trying to run a Stirling engine off our house! Let me guess, your parents are still paying the bills, aren't they? ;-)
Nunya Bidniz I was referring to houses in snowy places, like Russia, Canada, Greenland, etc. Usually most of the heat inside of a home is concentrated toward the ceiling. Just curious how much of the energy can be salvaged.
That would not be as efficient as just properly insulating your home. The Stirling engine would effectively be like an open widow. Sure it will generate some power but by using it you're still letting heat out of your home instead of keeping it inside.
hedgehog3180 that makes sense. Thanks for that answer. What about installing these near hotsprings in cold environments then?
Similar to the Antarctic example it should work nicely. Essentially you're describing a geothermal power plant, just one that happens to use the Stirling cycle.
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.
Ideal in Iceland, no?
Roger McKay Really Ideal in Iceland :D If you want, you can probably reliably power a house using a sterling engine XD
Technically ideal but practicall not ideal :) Since they already produce more geothermal energy than they even use :) No point in making even more. They get steam for free, so might as well run steam turbines, it's more efficient than Stirling engine. But yes, practical and useful if they connected Iceland to Europe and started selling clean, renewable energy!
iPelaaja1 *Sell it to the UK*
I'd like some cheap electricity please! XD
If someone ever develops a good way to store electricity (batteries are not all that great), Iceland will probably top using the thermal energy to farm tomatoes (they actually have greenhouses with tomatoes there) and start producing batteries.
Greenland is colder than Iceland, as an average. Odd enough.
Wow, he actually used the phrase,"Brownian motion!" Magnificent! Bravo! What's next? Boyle's Law? Keep up the good work pal!
Should use the heat generated by a GPU to power a stirling engine.. :)
Builders hate him! Watch how he decreases temperatures by 20°C in *one simple step*!
But fan rotates so slow. Card will overheat
@@pavankumaracharya atleast he try....
AMD*
A GPU with heatsinc.,
That was really neat, I came from Cody's Lab. Now back to his video. Thanks for the information, it was really neat.
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!
I want to see a Gamma Stirling Engine that uses a compost heap as a heat source, and a stream as a cold source. A well tended compost heap produces about 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and streams can be in the 30's to 50's Fahrenheit.