Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
While the invention of the basic free piston Stirling engine is generally attributed to Beale, independent inventions of similar types of engines were made by E.H. Cooke-Yarborough and C. West at the Harwell Laboratories of the UK AERE. [60] G.M. Benson also made important early contributions and patented many novel free-piston configurations ...
Inspirit Energy, a UK-based company have a gas fired CHP unit called the Inspirit Charger which is on sale in 2016. The floor standing unit generates 3 kW of electrical and 15 kW of thermal energy. [23] [24] WhisperGen, a New Zealand firm with offices in Christchurch, has developed an "AC Micro Combined Heat and Power" Stirling cycle engine.
NASA patented a type of solar-powered Stirling engine on August 3, 1976. It used solar energy to pump water from a river, lake, or stream. [1] The purpose of this apparatus is to “provide a low-cost, low-technology pump having particular utility in irrigation systems employed in underdeveloped arid regions of the earth…[using] the basic principles of the Stirling heat engine“.
The Stirling cycle is a thermodynamic cycle that describes the general class of Stirling devices. This includes the original Stirling engine that was invented, developed and patented in 1816 by Robert Stirling with help from his brother, an engineer.
Animation of the Low Temperature Difference Stirling engine. Ivo Kolin (1924, Zagreb - 2007, Zagreb) was a Croatian economist, engineer and inventor. [1]After years of experimentation he demonstrated in 1983 the first Low Temperature Difference (LTD) Stirling engine which ran at the temperature difference as low as 15 °C, astonishingly low at the time. [2]
The engine has near isothermal cylinders because 1) the heater area covers the entire cylinder end, 2) it is a short stroke device, with wide shallow cylinders, yielding a high surface area to volume ratio, 3) the average thickness of the gas space is about 0.1 cm, and 4) the working fluid is Helium, a gas having good thermal properties for Stirling engines.
The Beale number can be defined in terms of a Stirling engine's operating parameters: = where: B n is the Beale number; Wo is the power output of the engine (); P is the mean average gas pressure or (MPa, if volume is in cm 3)
It was originally developed around 1900 for the twin-cylinder Lanchester car engine where it allowed perfect balancing of the inertial forces on both pistons. A current example of its use is on beta type-Stirling engines; the drive's complexity and tight tolerances, causing a high cost of manufacture, is a hurdle for the widespread usage of this drive.