A New Concept                                                                                    

The view from the doghouse today.

I’ve dismantled the Terrapin, cleared off the garage workbench and cleaned out the doghouse; time for a new project...

I must be a gluten for punishment but I’m not done with the Stirling engine bug yet. I really want to know if usable work can be extracted from a low temperature gradient, of say, 80C. I am tired of patching air leaks in wooden boxes and of complex mechanical linkages. What I want to do is to build a simple experimental engine from which I can collect experimental data. I have some concepts that I am thinking about:

1. Keep this engine mechanically simple so that a minimum amount of energy is lost to friction.
2. Use a calibrated electric heat source so I can track the amount of energy going into the engine.
3. Use an off–the-shelf air tight containment vessel.
4. Instead of using a displacer to move air between hot and cold chambers, use a fan to move air though a stationary regenerator. An air-tight vessel will use a plastic bag partition to keep the hot and cold air volumes from mixing.
5. Experiment with making a piston from a metal can.
6. Gearing the piston output so that the flywheel turns many times each engine cycle.
7. Use a small generator coupled to the flywheel to measure output work.
8. Make over-pressure and under-pressure safety relief valves.
9. Use a computer to monitor and control the engine in real-time.
10. Use mostly recycled or scrounged materials with a budget of $100.
11. Write a simulation program that models what I might expect in the way of output power.

I am going to start with the simulation program and then see what develops.