Stirling Engines

                                          Engines

Engines have been powering our world since the Industrial Revolution: first, the dirty coal-powered steam engine, then cleaner and more efficient gasoline engine, and more recently jet engines in aeroplanes. 

The basic concept of an engine—something that exploits the difference between a high temperature and a low one—hasn't changed in a couple of hundred years, although occasionally people do still come up with minor improvements that make the process slightly faster or more efficient. One engine you may have heard a lot about recently is the Stirling Engine, which is a little bit like a steam engine that uses no steam! Instead, it heats, cools, and recycles the same air or gas over and over again to produce useful power that can drive a machine. Teamed up with solar power and other new technologies, Stirling engines sound like cutting-edge technology, but they've actually been around since 1816. Let's take a closer look at how they work!

What is a Stirling engine

A Stirling engine is a heat engine that is operated by cyclic compression and expansion of air or other gas at different temperatures, such that there is a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work. More specifically, the Stirling engine is a closed-cycle regenerative heat engine with a permanently gaseous working fluid. Closed-cycle, in this context, means a thermodynamic in which the working fluid is permanently contained within the system, and regenerative describes the use of a specific type of internal heat exchanger and thermal store, known as the regenerator.