Stirlingengineforum.com

Tom,
Glad to see you are still experimenting - what numbers were you able to measure?

First question has got to be which style of Stirling do you plan to make? (Alpha, Beta or Gamma)

Then, what's your heat source, and/or cooling mechanism?

Tom Booth wrote: ↑Mon Jul 01, 2024 9:14 am
That much force from a piece of wire and a glass of warm water is pretty extraordinary.

But to get 15 actual tonnes (or is that 15 imperial tons?) of force would require a 1 inch bar, not a 0.25mm wire.

If I have a way of controlling very detailed how much heat I'm putting into the engine, I don't think freezing it would be necessary. I'd be looking for the right delta T, where I start on that scale shouldn't matter. Right? From my point of view, Yes/Agreed. No need to freeze anything, unless you ...

I think that part of the problem with an ambient heat engine is that it doesn't initially appear to be mathematically impossible - if you had an engine that was a little over 50% efficient at converting heat to 'work'; and also had a refridgerator that was a little more than 50% efficient, then bing...

Jack wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2024 5:14 am Sounds reasonable.

I'm thinking temperature sensors on both the hot and cold plate.

That's a good start, but merely measuring the temperature of either/both plate doesn't directly tell you how much energy is passing through - a measure of both sides of each plate would be better.

As per title, I'm curious and have some time available. Excellent. Though be prepared for a large quantity of "healthy discussion" sooner or later. I'll let Tom have his say on how to set up the experiment (could anyone stop him?? :big smile: ) But for me, what I want to see for pretty mu...

Tom Booth wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 5:20 am Are you the same MikeB who busily rewrote history on the Talk Rational forum?

https://talkrational.org/index.php/topi ... #msg569775

Presumably.

Nope. Big hint - that guy talks in Dollars, which is monopoly money to a Scot! (ie myself.)

The relatively small amount of work that a heat pump converts into heat is minimal compared with the quantity of heat moved from the environment. From what I've seen, current commercial heat pumps use a _lot_ of energy to pump a useful amount of heat - that's why the Government here is having to tr...

No I'm saying heat can be carried by a fluid. That, as far as I know, is a pre-requisite for any heat-engine, but otherwise I'm not sure what the relevance is? And to expand that slightly - for any engine/motor (whether it be electric; a waterwheel; or steam) the most basic pre-requisite is a trans...

Jack wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2024 5:04 pm This is what I'm wondering.
The amount of energy it takes to move/pump a fluid barely has any link to the amount of stored energy in that fluid.
Is that a safe assumption?

Are you trying to suggest that we can treat heat as being a fluid ??

So, if you invest some energy in a process, it IS possible to get more back, than you invested. Fool say´s this can´t be, because will you break both 0, 1´ & 2´ Law + Carnot. But this is what my Heat-pump does all the time. 1 kw input becomes 5 kw output. I think this was answered several posts...

So, yep, a rigid box full of gas molecules is perpetual motion. To be more clear, I understand that if the temperature inside and outside the box are equal, there is no change in internal energy, and therefore "perpetual". But if the temperature(energy) inside is higher, the gas obviously...

In the case of the "Carnot Limit" temperature difference ratio, the equation was simply a mathematical representation of Carnot's (Caloric) theory of heat as a fluid that flows "down" from a hot "reservoir" to a cold "reservoir". The key word there is "w...

Jack wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2024 4:13 am Experiments will have to prove whether that will be big enough or not.

Experiments are great, but we can at least make a calculation of the max possible energy it can store, if we know:
The volume;
The type of fill - is this just ordinary sand?
The temperature of the source, ie the fire itself