Stirling Engine | This Age-Old Technology Could Prove Quite Useful ...

from vinyl records to speakeasy synth pop and even mom jeans styles and trends from bygone areas are making a strong comeback could this phenomenon find its way into the clean energy industry maybe as more the world joins in on banning diesel and gasoline engines there is one type of engine that might be poised for a comeback the sterling engine more flexible clean and low maintenance than internal combustion engines the sterling engine might just factor into the future of clean energy so what exactly is a sterling engine how does it work and how is it different from the gas engines we know and tolerate could this relic of the past create a worthy niche for itself in our modern energy landscape or are some things just better left in the past we thought these questions deserve a deeper dive here on 2-bit davinci [Music] special thanks to brilliant for sponsoring this video feed your curiosity for math and science with the link in the description in recent years a number of pieces of technology have found their way back into the mainstream in fact if you're interested we recently did a whole video on different types of mechanical batteries what we know for certain is that there will likely never be a singular one-size-fits-all solution to energy production and storage however for some reason the sterling engine in particular has managed to climb its way out of the past and find a home in the modern age of energy largely due to some of its very interesting characteristics at its most basic level a sterling engine is a type of heat engine that utilizes the cyclical compression and expansion of air and other gases the device originally known as sterling's air engine was invented and patented all the way back in 1816 by reverend robert sterling who hoped to improve on some of the dangers and inefficiencies of the ubiquitous steam engines that exploded pun intended during the industrial revolution while other types of heat engines appeared in years prior to sterling's invention his was one of the earliest put into practical use in 1818 as a water pump inside a quarry the engine consists of an airtight chamber filled with gas called the working fluid as well as two pistons unlike internal combustion engines which require the burning of fuel inside a combustion chamber sterling engines are external combustion engines meaning that the driving energy comes from outside the closed system and what is the driving energy it can be any heat source a solar mirror setup coal fire even something as simple as a cup of coffee as the heat warms up on one side of the chamber the working fluid expands this working fluid can be any substance that remains in gas form as it heats and cools typically working fluids include hydrogen or helium in the interest of safety helium or nitrogen is often used it eliminates any risk of using oxygen and for good reason the bottom is more as gases heat up and expand they move upward as the gas expands inside the engine's chamber it pushes up against a piston which in turn attaches to a wheel as the piston goes up the wheel starts turning transforming thermal energy into mechanical energy while there are different models of sterling engines they all typically require two pistons unlike internal combustion engines where the pistons are sealed to prevent gases from escaping in a sterile engine there is no seal instead air is freely allowed to move around the piston this allows air to come into contact with both the hot and cool sides alpha models have a compression piston and an expansion piston placed inside two separate cylinders while beta and gamma configurations have a work piston and a displacer piston the former having both of them in the same cylinder and the ladder separating them into hot and cold before we get back to the show let me take a moment and tell you about our sponsor brilliant if you watch my videos odds are you're curious i'd like to figure out how stuff works i studied engineering in college and then taught myself software and it completely changed my life allowing me to save enough money to go full time here on youtube i love to learn and if you've been even a little curious about getting into software check out this course on pseudocode on brilliant if you've avoided software because it looks so complex remember a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step software engineers start by writing pseudocode a mix of words and numbers to help convey what we want to accomplish this way we don't get bogged down by the syntax or specifics of a programming language go through this class on brilliant and you'll start to think like a software engineer if you can write their steps to help a pet sitter feed your hamster while you just might be ready to start building your first app i love the practical examples that they offer and if you like problem solving puzzles math or science support the show and be one of the first 200 users to use the link brilliant.com davinci to save 20 on a yearly premium subscription with brilliant once the heated gas reaches the top of the chamber it meets what's known as the heat sink usually a piece of metal that releases heat into the air for high powered engines this might be a radiator which helps transfer heat at a much higher clip or it can simply be a top metal plate for the chamber itself as the air cools it contracts sinking back down and pulling the piston turning the wheel even more once the cold air sinks down to the hot side the process begins all over again one crucial point to remember is that what truly drives a sterling engine is the heat exchange so that begs the question would a sterling engine work with a cold fuel the answer is yes if you were to take your engine off of your steaming hot coffee and place it on top of a refreshing iced coffee you'd see the process start to work but in reverse in fact by reversing the process you can actually turn a sterling engine into a heat pump we'll get back to that in a little bit so you might be thinking to yourself great science lesson but why are we talking about this 200 year old piece of technology well it turns out some technologies are sort of like betty white they just keep coming back as demand continues to increase for energy production and energy storage for intermittent renewables the sterling engine has emerged as a potential contender it's important to understand the sterling engine's strengths and weaknesses let's start with the strengths sterling engines are external combustion engines this means all the soot and gunk buildup you have in internal combustion engines don't happen here result is far less maintenance and far longer operational lifetimes two they have the potential to be far quieter in operation than either diesel or gasoline engines three they are more efficient than either diesel or gasoline engines as well a typical combustion engine might extract roughly 25 percent of the potential energy stored in the fuel with the same fuel some estimates suggest that a sterling engine might be able to get between 40 and 50 of that potential energy and four they can also operate on really any fuel source that can provide heat now let's talk about the cons one to create a similar amount of work a sterling engine would typically have to be much larger than an internal combustion engine two similarly they have to also be heavier three because they're bigger and less mass manufactured they're going to be significantly more expensive at least at first four sterling engines like gas engines can't start by themselves and have significant thermal inertia to overcome in order to get started 5 sterling engines can't readily change its operating speed or rpm like a gas engine can this is the final nail in the why can't we use sterling engines in cars coffin what's most attractive about sterling engines is their ability to use a variety of heat sources as their driving power meaning they don't need to be reliant on steam or fuel i like to think of future applications for sterling engines in places where there is currently waste heat rather than burning some fuel for the engine directly for example here's some common waste heat sources in your home one a refrigerator has a heat pump that sucks the heat inside itself and pumps it outside this heat is currently just heating your home which sounds nice in winter but is anything but in the summertime two a natural gas hot water heater isn't perfectly efficient and currently waste gases and heat is ported through exhaust vents in your roof or walls three your air conditioning system is currently also a heat pump that moves perfectly good working heat and discards it outside four your attic in the day gets heated up through heat transfer from the roof and through radiation from the roof materials this heat is a huge source of heat eventually making its way into your home no matter how much insulation you install and five every laptop and smartphone and computer you have is all making heat co-generation units sometimes called combined heat and power or chps utilize residual heat from coal natural gas or even nuclear power stations which could not only make these power plants more efficient themselves but could potentially make sizeable impacts in carbon emissions so you don't use any fuel directly but instead harness any extra waste heat from these various power plant sources to further boost the plant's efficiency remember the waste heat is basically everywhere every light bulb tv computer car basically everything makes waste heat if you're thinking about other areas in your life where there is a temperature gradient as a potential application for a sterling engine remember that what you want is waste heat for example if you hooked up one side of your sterling engine to the nice cool air-conditioned home and the other side to the outside hot air sure you could power a sterling engine but remember that what you'd be moving is heat from outside into inside and that's not what you want because then you'll just have to run the air conditioning to cool your house down again let's go back to an example i mentioned earlier the hot attic now as a free bonus to all my viewers i'm gonna let you future inventors in on a billion dollar idea all i ask in return is a simple click of that like button okay so your attic is probably the hottest part of your home and that heat slowly heats up the rest of your house but what if instead we installed a huge radiator with big fins able to absorb this heat we could then pump a working fluid like water through it much like a radiator in a car or a water cooled pc this water would get hot through the radiator and then we could pump it through a hot plate on a sterling engine the engine once started would begin to reciprocate and we would generate electricity the cool side of the plate will then just pump the air outside so if your attic was 120 degrees and the outside air was 80 degrees this 40 degree delta that was just making your house hotter could now be used to generate electricity an important thing to remember here is that if you want to really make some serious amount of energy you need to transfer a serious amount of heat that's why our coffee cup sterling engine will never make much energy it's just a flat plate and only has a small amount of surface area for heat transfer larger more complex heat sinks with materials like copper make the entire system more expensive and complex but far more effective sterling engines could also help with intermittency and renewables when placed at a focal point of a parabolic solar mirror a sterling engine can convert solar energy into electricity at an efficiency rate comparable to concentrated photovoltaic panels but even better they could store all that energy in something like a flywheel during peak production hours then quickly and efficiently disperse that energy during primary consumption hours sterling engines have already been used in a number of applications the swedish navy has three submarines equipped with sterling-based propulsion systems according to their shipbuilding firm kokum are the quietest vessels in their class as we mentioned earlier one other promising application of sterling technology is in heat pumps by applying mechanical power you can actually reverse the engine's process turning it into a heat pump where heat is absorbed during the expansion process at ambient temperatures and expelled during the compression process where it can then be carried off to perform a useful heating function in a given space a useful analogy is an electric motor provide electricity as input and it can spin a car's wheels but then flip things around uses spinning wheels kinetic energy as input to turn the electric motor and you can create electricity to store in a battery in the same way if you use heat potential you can power a sterling engine's piston or inversely if you provide mechanical power to move the piston then you can pump heat potential from one side of the engine to the other considering that today over 3 billion heating implants are used all over the world most of them requiring a lot of energy as well as hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants a sterling powered heat pump system would provide a far more efficient cleaner alternative without all the harmful fuels and emissions nasa used sterling powered cooling systems during the shuttle program years and british company fluid mechanics is developing a system for commercial use utilizing helium which can transfer energy 10 times more efficiently than air as always there are some valid reasons why we don't see this technology applied all across the board the main issue is size and weight for sterling engines to produce noteworthy amounts of energy they need to be pretty big which means higher cost this sterling engine for example for all the sound and glory can only power this tiny led that's because well it's really small so the amount of heat energy it's able to absorb on one side and release on the other side is also very small this gets to the heart of why we don't see sterling engines more often like everything it comes down to the added cost and complexity and if it's worth it historically for water heaters and hvac manufacturers the answer has been no garages are already crowded and it's hard to imagine making extra space for a sterling engine also another problem we have today is that all of our appliances work on islands refrigerators acs and water heaters don't work together or talk to each other but what if just like water or electricity a heat line ran through your house and into your attic then large appliances that produce heat could dump their heat into this heat line then this heat line plus extra heat from the attic could be used to power a whole house sterling engine tesla has mentioned that they want to get into the hvac system game and i have a feeling they'll be thinking about the detached appliances in your home in a more holistic way as homes get smarter and regulations require us to get more efficient i think the concept of a heat line coupled with a sterling engine is a very real possibility in the next decade but as we mentioned there are some key challenges we have to overcome so if you're an engineer scientist or a curious nerd like me why not start thinking about the problem yourself you never know where it might lead you but what do you think are sterling engines the way to go for renewables and other applications or should we place our focus on other emerging energy tech let us know in the comments section thank you guys so much for watching this was a really fun video to make i love sterling engines they are really awesome and if you want to get your hands on one check out amazon they have them for like 20 or 30 bucks endless hours of fun to be had and as always a huge thank you to all of our two-bit tribe members that is our patrons on patreon and our youtube channel members you guys help us write our scripts do reviews we do video calls and it's just a fun place for people who love the future and technology to chat and hang out amongst ourselves so if you want to join us well link's in the description we'd love to have you on board take a look around we have some other awesome videos on some really fun and interesting technology that we think you will like and until next time i'm ricky with tuba davinci and if nothing else just remember the future is going to be awesome

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 294,055

Keywords: stirling engine, renewable energy, heat engine, stirling engine (invention), big stirling engine, stirling engine car, stirling engine diy, stirling engine fan, stirling engine boat, stirling engine solar, stirling engine homemade, stirling engine animation, stirling engine generator 5kw, stirling, stirling engine generator, stirling engine how it works, stirline cycle, stirling heat pump, stirline engine, stirling heat, stirling heat engine, stirling heat pump efficiency

Id: GFCsYictPFo

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021