It Can Save The World - The Simple Genius of Hot Air aka Stirling Engines
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 Published On Sep 10, 2023

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I often make videos about ICE, internal combustion engines and from time to time I get comments saying "why do you keep saying Internal combustion engine, it's not like we have external combustion engines". Well, that's exactly what we have in today's video. A working, running, power-producing external combustion engine. This one is a hot air or Stirling engines and it runs without needing carburetors or injectors or cams or valves or timing chains or spark plugs or anything. it is incredibly simple and it can be emissions negative, running on waste heat to save the world.

So air heated here at the heat source. As it’s heated it expands but because our piston in this cylinder is loose fitting the air simply passes around it and moves through the passage between our two cylinders where it meets with our tight fitting piston. Because it is tight fitting the air cannot go around it and because it has nowhere else to go it exerts its pressure on the tight fitting piston pushing it outward. This rotates the flywheel and generates power. As you can see our other cylinder has cooling fins on it. Cooling fins dramatically increase surface area allowing this cylinder to release more heat into the surrounding air which means that once air reaches this cylinder it cools down. As it cools down it becomes less dense and pressure now reduces. But we still have ample momentum in the flywheel left over so the tight fitting piston now pushes the cooled, de-pressurized air past our loose fitting piston back to the hot side of the engine where the air heats up and expands again and the cycle repeats itself.

Now onto the issue of waste heat. It's everywhere around us. Turn off your cooking hob or oven and there's enough heat in there to run a small Stirling for a few minutes and produce electricity. When you turn of your car and park it there is enough heat remaining in the exhaust manifold to run a little Stirling for 10 or even 20 minutes. Producing electricity and charging the batteries of a hybrid vehicle while the vehicle is stationary and not plugged into anything. Thermal power-plants also produce massive amounts of waste heat. Burning garbage, the list goes on. Companies such as New Zealand's WhsiperGen and UK's Inspirit Chargers have combined gas boilers with Stirling engines and even run large scale market tests of this technology.

2 Stirling engines are the means of propulsion for what is often described as the world’s quietest submarine, Sweden’s Gotland class attack submarine, which were the first submarine’s in the world to feature a Stirling Engine air-independent propulsion. This system enables the submarine to stay submerged for weeks instead of days and it makes this submarine more difficult to detect than nuclear submarines which require large noisy motors capable of pumping massive amounts of cooling water needed for the nuclear reactor. In comparison the Gotland class submarine is almost completely silent. Liquid oxygen and diesel are stored onboard and burned together to create heat for the hot side of the Stirling engines while abundant surrounding sea water is used as a heat sink for the cold side.

A special thank you to my patrons:
Daniel
Pepe
Brian Alvarez
Peter Della Flora
Dave Westwood
Joe C
Zwoa Meda Beda
Toma Marini
Cole Philips

#d4a #stirling #cleanenergy

00:00 How it works
06:00 Benefits
08:55 How it can save the world
15:49 Undetectable Submarine

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