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Five Cylinder Stirling Engine

Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 2:09 pm
by jozafax
Hello!

Here is a video of my recent build and here are some construction details.

Let me know what you think about it :grin: .

How much power output on this ?

Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 6:47 am
by Agent86
Hi, this is nice design.

I'm gathering info to build my first mini Stirling engine.
I'm planning on building a huge one at my house if I can get these small various ones working correctly

Can you tell approx. how much power this 5 cylinder engine might have at low heat ?

Please advise on any info
Thanks

Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 9:27 am
by jozafax
Hi, thanks.

I would guess the power output to be arround 3 Watts (on candle fire and -20°C coolant as seen on the video). Perhaps i can push the power output to 5-7 W :grin: ,with alcohol burners that i'm currently building.

Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:38 pm
by kid_rock
jozafax
Very nice! I especially like the aesthetics of the design.

Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 12:17 pm
by jozafax
Thanx!

Nice

Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 10:12 am
by Agent86
I like it too,

Curious about the heat temperature, perhaps hot water heating the bottom portion ?

Could that be sufficient to heat the bottom area to about 170-200 degrees, and the top upper portion I'm going to use my own design of cooling at around 45-50 degrees.

I'm curious if it will run with the temperature difference ? it's not a lot of heat, and not much cooling,.

Also what portion of the upper half should be coold, the whole half? or just the top, or just the top quarter is best ?

I also like the look of your design very nice looking.

Please advise
Thanks

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:59 am
by jozafax
Thank you!

You need large cooling/heating surfaces (heat flow) in order to quickly (power) cool/heat a big ammount (power) of air inside the engine's pressure vessel.

Somewhere over the interwebs, i picked up, that the swept volume of the working piston (WP surface x WP travel) should equal one quater of the displaced air by the displacer piston (DP base surface x DP travel), for our over-the-thumb-engineered Stirlings anyway :grin: .

It should run on the specified temp. difference (150 deg F) if you'll keep the friction down.

So for a relatively high design (gamma!) i would suggest this construction:
Image

and for a flat one i would heat/cool only the bottom/top surface of the pressure vessel.

Best of luck to you!!

Displacer and Displacer Piston ?

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 10:00 am
by Agent86
jozafax wrote:Thank you!

You need large cooling/heating surfaces (heat flow) in order to quickly (power) cool/heat a big ammount (power) of air inside the engine's pressure vessel.

Somewhere over the interwebs, i picked up, that the swept volume of the working piston (WP surface x WP travel) should equal one quater of the displaced air by the displacer piston (DP base surface x DP travel), for our over-the-thumb-engineered Stirlings anyway :grin: .

It should run on the specified temp. difference (150 deg F) if you'll keep the friction down.

So for a relatively high design (gamma!) i would suggest this construction:
Image

and for a flat one i would heat/cool only the bottom/top surface of the pressure vessel.

Best of luck to you!!
Thanks for the reply.

I'm trying to follow this to be sure I understand your suggestion here:

There is a Displacer and Displacer Piston
And a Power Piston

Please confirm your talking about the Displacer and Displacer Piston swept volume being 4 X the size of the Power Piston Air Volume? Correct ?

Please advise Thanks