The Stirling Engine, absorb energy from candles, coffee, and more!

Step 12 How it works:

Here's how it works (see first "picture")

first, either most the air is in the hot, or it is in the cold side, the flywheel makes sure this is the case.

1-air is forced into hot side (for sake of example) usually by someone spinning the flywheel.
2-air expands and pushes piston outward (stroke)
3- air is transferred to cold side out of hot side
4- air is all in cold side and begins to contract
5- cold piston is "sucked" down because of contraction.
6- flywheel pushes air back to hot side
7- repeat

Once you get the base concept down, it's not that hard, like the balloon, we're expanding and contracting air.

Now, one key factor, the animation is a alpha type engine, we're building a gamma type engine. The only difference is, there's a single chamber where one side is hot, one side is cold. a piece of foam (which only takes up space) is moved from the hot side to the cold side to push most of the air to one side or the other. Because most of the air is at the hot or cold side, a single piston either moves up or down because of the expansion or contraction. It's the same thing, just re-organized. See the second picture for a animation.

Comments

[martinhui]

I'm thinking to build one to drive the model boat with rc, but I see that the fixture is big enough to hold in a small boat, do you think there is other version to fit and if the output power is partically to drive.

[asdfgqwerty1234]

how did u stick fly wheel with the crank shaft?

[BIGHAIRYDUDE]

all you need to do is take a cd and tape some cardboard to it and then drill a hole in the center and glue it.

[DeiuieL]

thank you very much pal, hehehehe oyu save the day! weeee

[ki4cmj]

Very glad to see your instructions. Great pictures to go along with the text. I will be giving this a try this weekend. Thanks for posting this and I hope to see a DIY on a beta sterling. :-)

[brainspater]

i like the way you did the diagram.