A Small History of
Stirling
Engines
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The Stirling engine
was invented
by Reverend Robert Stirling in 1816. It's purpose
was to
function as a safer source of generating power
than the steam engine, which was
History
common to
having it's hot water
boilers exploding from extreme build up
of pressure. At
first it was only
capable of
small things like acting as a water pump or a kerosene fan
Types of Stirling Engines
(kerosene fans were
nothing more than a fan blade connected to a Stirling engine with a
kerosene burner attached).
In the late
1800's they had
become quite popular due to the fact they were so
How it Works
dependable, safe, and
easy to use.
Troubles
The early 1900's brought
despair
for the Stirling engine as engines running off of
cheap fossil fuels
appeared. While fossil fuel engines were (and still are) louder,
dirtier, Works
Cited and
not nearly as reliable, the
Stirling engine just couldn't
put out enough output at that
point in
technology to keep up with
fossil fuel engines. In the 1940's - 1950's as gas prices rose
and people
were starting
to see the first environmental effects of
fossil fuel engines, people became interested in
improving on the
Stirling engine design. Car makers attempted to apply Stirling
engine technology to their
automobiles (General Motor's program
lasted from 1958 to 1970). Nasa began working on a
nuclear-powered Stirling
power plant for their space stations.
Stirling engines have also been adapted for electricity generation for
homes and
businesses by running off of solar power during sunny days
and using clean burning natural gas
when the sun is not out.
I was fortunate enough to hear rumors
about Stirling engine development in Sweden from my Industrial
Processes shop
professor (U.A.F. class M.E. 321) as we built our own
Stirling engines. According to a
newsletter he
received, Sweden
is developing a Stirling engine that will run off of natural gas to
heat houses.
While it burns
the natural gas to heat the house it also can produce up to 15kW of
electricity. Theoretically
you could put one in each
household in a city like Fairbanks ( a city that has a battery cache
capable of
powering the entire power grid for
a certain duration, in Fairbanks it's called B.E.S.S.). A home
usually pulls
more than 15kW of power from the
city grid during the day
time. But through the use of the Stirling engine
you could heat
the entire house and take 15kW of strain off the grid per house during
the daytime. At night
when/if
electrical use dropped below 15kW
that power could be fed into a city grid battery cache like
Fairbank's
B.E.S.S. and that could be supplemented to other parts of town.
Granted this is all theories and
rumors for now.
