I'm so glad one of these "wave of the future" videos actually turned out to be accurate, as these clean burning, powerful and long lasting engines are everywhere.
@@ZeraphZen you would be correct Salty, I wish they were real too, and I've done a bit of study since my sarcastic comment. The biggest problem is weight, and size compared to ICEs, the one featured is as big as a truck engine, but 1/3rd as powerful. (being most pickups average 270-300hp, this one was 70.)
@@michaelwescott8064 while yes, they do not output the most power for their size and weight, they are more than suitable for everyday use honestly. The truck featured in the video originally had a 150hp engine replaced by a 75hp stirling engine which doesn't seem to have caused too many issues as none are stated. The pickup truck had a 95hp engine replaced with a 75hp stirling engine and similarly there no issues stated. They functioned just fine even if they're a bit underpowered, so I can't come up with any issues in everyday use of said vehicles.
Could you imagine using solar, hydrogen cells and sugarcane moonshine to run the Sterling generator to power an electric car hybrid? You could even use compost and bacteria or yeast to power the car. Even farts can charge the battery.
solar and HHO wouldn't make sense, nor would compost or bacteria. you'd need a methane biogenerator and specialized subsystem to feed this into the engine for a lower power & little range due to the nature of methane being a gas, however it's quite practical to heat your house and for cooking.
@@foresttaniguchi3168 you have to take the fuel with you wherever you go, this raises the importance of energy and power density and safety too. some fuels are really bad at these. You can run a car on methane but it won't run well.
@@foresttaniguchi3168 My point is it would be really impractical to carry a fuel with such insalnely low energy density and a bulky, heavy engine in a car. you could probably extract methane and run a car with it but not well since it's a gas, other fuel types are just ridiculous.
the death of the stirling engine was one of materials used at the time. High pressure hydrogen was the circulating heat transfer medium, and under high pressures used in this engine, caused hydrogen embrittlement of the engine parts, and then the seals required for efficiency were expensive and short-lived. Politics also weighed in, as petroleum interests felt threatened. At one time, Sears and Roebuck had a portable generator powered with a stirling engine. Also, the US Army experimented with a stirling engine for powering a mobile power plant...multi-fuel capabilities and extremely low noise signature made it attractive.
@Azathoth Hastur your reply is unresponsive to my remarks about hydrogen embrittlement and short-lived seals in this automotive test of the stirling engine. High pressure hydrogen was the heat transfer medium, and was difficult to seal and damaged the steels used in the engine, by making the metal brittle.
you have completely failed to understand what you read. These engines can be powerful and have advantages the internal combustion engine does not have, but they are expensive. The ICE engine is popular because it is cheaper, that's it. @@sierraecho884
Anyone saying that the Stirling engine is slow to speed up and heavy, I would like to forward you to the Nasa technical report related to this video where they put the Mod 2 (another Stirling engine) into a Chevrolet Celebrity. 0-60 was 12.4 on the Mod 2 (the "Spark Ignition" was 13.0) and the weight was only 100 lb heavier. (100 lb for a 1.25 ton vehicle)
Doesn't matter. As much as I love this kind of tech for vehicles. Cars that run off of stirling engines or even steam engines are never going to happen unless a complete power structure collapses where we can do what we want. Because its quite obvious now that the powers that shouldn't be have already given the "solution" for ICE vehicles. Electric battery cars. Hopefully a Hydrogen powered electric car makes a break through but even the Toyota Mirai has been crapped on by everyone in youtube hurting its possibility of another one in the market.
livingspringsfarms25 i wouldn’t say that if I was you... The Stirling engine would have been more successful to make people save tons of money on both oil and gasoline, but the companies of both subjects mentioned don’t want us to save money on neither both, which is a really unfair thing, but anyways, America will stay behind while other countries are progressing better.
Named after the designer Rev.Robert Stirling from Scotland.Designed by him at the beginning of the last century.During the 1960,s the Phillips electrical company of Eindhoven improved the design and the engine was tested in a fleet of commercial buses.Results were good.NASA had an interest in the engine to provide electrical power in space as the engine could be run on any heat source including nuclear.
Not just heat, cold too as it only needs a temperature difference, which if you stick a cooler on the outside of the station in -270 degrees C and the other inside the 20 degrees C station, you have power without taking up extra fuel and in space they don't actually rely on heaters they actually rely on coolers because all the electronics and body heat, heat up the station as heat cannot transfer in space due the spacing of particles and as such the sterling engine would help provide power and cool the station down as it's taking heat out.
@@JustinTopp Why moonshine. Certainly, It would be more expensive to produce than what you could buy fuel for. If you're thinking that ethanol based fuels are good for the planet, think again. Not that I believe this whole CO2 thing, but the sheer impact that just planting the crops to produce ethanol produces lots of CO2. Then you have the very act of fermentation that produces massive amounts of CO2 alone. Then you need to take the wine/beer you produced fermenting your crops and turn it all into high proof alcohol. Not worth it from any standpoint.
@@protoborg Yes wireless through air is pretty bad as explained by Nikola Tesla as it loses energy squared by distance. By Earth however there are minimal loses where he claimed around 5% and later around 1% You people are indocrinated by the school system, wake up
@@manipulativer No, fool. In order to get any kind of useful power to be transmitted over a distance of more than a few centimeters, you have to be at very high altitude. Somewhere in the neighborhood of half a mile up, near the lower boundary of the ionosphere.
@@protoborg We're literally watching them drive around full sized vehicles for 1000's of miles and several years in this video and getting better than average gas mileage.
@@LordElfa No we aren't. All we see here is the 10 or so seconds of onscreen movement. This is like a movie promo in that we see only the good parts of this experiment.
@@protoborg you got him on the argument technically speaking, but my hunch tells me the video isn't lying. Power ratios, lack of torque/acceleration, poor adoption barriers to entry, and difficulty with starting the heat to the engine from ignition to drive seem like some good reasons it didn't work. But it doesn't mean you can't power a large vehicle for long distances. A sedan only needs 25 hp for constant speed on the highway.
Again I watch this video!!! and look for any updates!!! this engine might not have been perfection, but it is better than what the majority of the world operates under.
@@manipulativer You don't even know what "washed up" means. That is funny, but very sad. The word you are looking for is "brainwashed". Then again, your mommy must not have taught you that word. BTW, you are sooooo very wrong.
@@protoborg Well you are already borged by the ai and using momy as an insults is showing me that you were not loved enough and this is your EGO problem. wake up washed up borg, listen to your intuition, go in Nature away from electro smog and i promise you will feel better. cheers
just an idea, but in the same way that there are companies making prototype heavy duty trucks using a turbine to drive an electric generator for increased mpg, could the stirling engine be used in place of a turbine?
No one is putting a turbine in a ground vehicle. For one thing, jet fuel is fucking expensive. That's why a bus is sooooo much cheaper than an airplane. Second, turbines are only really efficient at high altitudes and high speeds. That's why turboprops are a thing. Third, turbines are VERY dangerous. They have MANY fast moving parts that are exposed to the air. That's how they work. Those parts can kill people. Fourth, turbines require a great deal of machinery to make them function. All of that machinery would make the vehicle VERY heavy. Fifth, turbines do NOT self-start. They require an electric motor to spin them up to operational speed. In a ground vehicle you might as well just use THAT electricity to power the wheels directly.
@@protoborg It takes a lot more electricity to move a vehicle than it does to merely start a motor, and combustion turbines are already used in trains and power stations. The issue is that they're built to run at a constant speed and don't work as a replacement for a reciprocating piston engine if you're using a mechanical transmission, but for electric transmissions there's no reason it couldn't work for a car.
@@handles_are_a_bit_rubbish You are a fucking moron. If anything it would take more energy to START a motor than to run it. No they aren't. Trains use electric motors, not turbines. The only power plants that use turbines are hydroelectric plants. Everything else uses steam; coal, nuclear, oil. They all use steam heated by the fuel. The issue is turbines are only efficient at very high speed. Actually, there are several reasons why it wouldn't work for a car.
@@protoborg Well you're wrong because there have been several non-aircraft vehicles powered by gas turbines, the obvious example being the turbine power plant of the M1 Abrams tank used by the US Army, or for the gas turbines used by naval vessels for high speed cruising, or the Union Pacific GTELs using turbine-electric power transmissions. Sure, a mechanical transmission turbine wouldn't work for a car but an electric transmission probably would since it means the turbine can run at it's most efficient power band at all times since the electric motors are the ones actually moving the car. Also, it would take more energy to keep an motor running than it would to start it since energy=power*time, so even if the motor needed something insane like 140kJ of energy to start it and it then runs for about 2 minutes at a power of 20kW, the running engine will have generated 120s*20kW=2400kJ of energy, which is quite a lot more than the energy needed to start it.
hit the nail a little to well lets hear what you know about 1 watt for 8 or more btu free stuff people lose there mind and or want you sleeping with fish about but we will hear nothing less becuase of sleeping arangments more about never ending onslot of highly in doctor nated parrots them with out eyes to see or ears to hear test all things for themselfs if they did all men would be liars and they would be as wise as serpents and dicile as doves look up much to see
Study history. It was. Stirling engine was used as a portable generators. Largely used 19th century to pump water out of mines and primitive low economy engines, since they didn't use steam, they didn't need a boiler, thus no complicated boiler man or risk of steam explosions. All you needed was a fire man to put wood/coal in it. But the power to weight ratio of steam engines improved between 1840s to 1870s. By 1870s triple expansion steam engine rendered them obsolete in large setups. Small stirling engines were used in remote domestic houses before connected to electricity..pumping water up hill, or even novel idea powering home appliances like washing machines, etc.
You could use electricity to provide the heat but it would be extremely inefficient. It would be better just to use the electricity to power a motor. But this engine platform can use any type of heat so even focused solar light through a Fresnel lens for example could provide sufficient heat to run the engine in theory.
I just thought the concept of the sterling engine was so simple and effective. I feel if we improved on this technology we can make strides in reducing emissions and energy use in homes and buildings as heat pumps or in some kind of practical application
How did they regulate speed? I know they used a 3 speed Chrysler. Were they able to cool the engine down that quick for rpms? Or did they use a hydraulic friction type engagement or something.
@hmm ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880002196/downloads/19880002196.pdf read this, acceleration was basically identical to the performance of the vehicles original gasoline engine.
what happens if you use an induction heater and lithium ion batteries or a lead acid induction heater requires less energy and compare with an electric car which of them spends more energy
I invented the thermal window generator... and the Brisbine drive. But I still love the Stirling engine. It's adorable. You have to compare it to the Tesla turbine though...
these could be used wherever electrics fail, particurarly in canada, alaska and especially russia and poland. due to the nature of the stirling engine it would be PERFECT for colder environments, this makes you think why these arent in cars as of now. If only i had a workshop...
the swedish nayv uses it for submarines, most quiet and most difficult to detect submarines on the world also the excuse they had to not use it in car after the test shown in this video was the power modulation, that would not be an issues if it was used as a power generator in a serial hybrid drivetrain @@AIuminum
It's my understanding that it used next to no fuel to operate. In other words it was too good. The government could not make enough money off it. They would have to sell gasoline to you at $150/gallon or something stupid. Can't have something hit the market where the government isn't constantly reaching into your wallet and stealing from you.
Pretty amazing stuff this was the eighties and the sterling engine exceeded expectations. They are making a big comeback with the Chinese leading the way in sterling development. 😎👍
Is google listening to our conversations? I was just talking with a buddy the other day about how to combine Sterling engine as an on board generator to charge EV batteries to propel a converted School Bus Camper (or any vehicle) via electric motor. 75 HP is no slouch when it comes to charging, but if I've thought of it, I know I'm not the first...
Erm actually this isn't THAT good I already built a better vehicle engine in my garage and it doesn't even need heat it runs on water!..... (*Gets assassinated by "random crazy guy"*)
maybe as a way to recycle the energy at some loss, but it won't generate more energy than put in if that is what you're thinking. It could be a really efficient engine, but not necessarily a powerful engine considering the power to weight ratio which is important in a moving vehicle.
@@entritur I am thinking you could hook up 2 alternators plus a solar panel to get electricity for the induction coils. You could use 4 500watt flat coils. That's 2kw you can get that very easily with couple of alternators. NASA should try that.
If we had these in a hybrid to get something out of the wasted heat that makes up >60% of the energy loss in car engines, then we'd have cars more efficient than any non hybrid can be.
The Stirling engine is too heavy and expensive. It requires helium or hydrogen at very high pressures, above 100 bars and it is very difficult to guarantee the seal. Cars need light and powerful engines to avoid wasting as much energy accelerating and driving up hills. But these engines are very quiet and clean.
They are better suited for other things, all tools have their own strengths and weakness, you can chop a tree with an axe but can't cut fine salmon slices like you can with a knife, while with the knife you can't cut a thick tree but you can cut fine salmon slices in the kitchen, everything has it's use
Very nice presentation! I belive this engine is the MOD-II correct? I always confude the MOD I and II because of the veichles on wich they were used that were a chevrolet and a ford respectively... I belive... correct? XD I guess that the advantage of gettilg high torque at low speed is one of the greatest of the stirling technology as refered in this video, wath can be comparable to diesel nowadays. This proves that this engine may, some day, operate trucks and heavy machines... lol
You might as well use the electricity to run an electric motor. Take a gas powered Stirling and have it run a generator to run an electric motor and small battery pack. Refueling is just like a regular car.
@@gime5323 it doesn't. Literally 1 watt makes heat. Almost every space heater in existence is only 1500 watts. They make Sterling engine toys that run on 5v ac and work off of a single wire coiled around the air chamber. All it requires is a difference in temperature from one end of the chamber to the other, this can actually be achieved with no fuel at all by simply cooling the opposite end below ambient temp.
Where were the MPG figures? And sure, maybe ICE engines both then and now are more efficient/practical than that Sterling from '92 in the video but surely it could be improved just as much, at least.
Исходный текст You are stopped this project, but we can build this type of engine more cheaper, more easily construction, more lightly, and list to enertion. What was tryid by Chrysler with Gas Turbine Engine, we'll do it with Stirling. Turbine Stirling is the future of energetic. Turbine Stirling can be used with thermal battery. And we get power plant, with calculation energy losses during conversion, more bigger volume if we compere it with Li-Ion batteris. But this sistem has lurge work resource. At this sistem only with engine will probably break becaus engine has slightly wearing, but battery does not grow old at all and does not wearing at all. It's technology can killed electric madness, displacing electric and hydrogen cars from roads.
The sterling engine would be the perfect replacement for the internal combustion engine and the dodge ram in the video was a perfect example of how easy it was to incorperate into any civilian motor vehicles at the time and could easily be incorperated in basicly any motor vehicle today. If we want a clean alternative to have the environment and not have to rely on pain in the ass evs that cost more to keep maintained then they are worth then this is the way to go. Hell i.m.a hybrid could even uses sterling engines and would be cheaper then full electric cars, sure they would have to be placed linear but o well. I mean no one needs a basic passenger car any more. I mean trucks, suvs and cuv are the only thing that we should bother making anymore. Cuv are litterally cars that are 4wd or awd so it would be easy to incorperate. But unfortunately this will never happen thanks to greedy corperate america.
I don't know about greedy corperate america stuff as i Live in Europe, but there are some simple reasons why stirling engines aren't used in automotive vehicles. 1. The engine is generally harder to start, it needs to heat up first and then it can run, while electric motors, diesel and gasoline engines are start and go 2. They produce less power which can be an offset to a lot of people, also produces less torque which might make climbing hills hard, also the engine can't really accelerate as fast as a gasoline engine, because the engine has to heat up so if you see a hill you literally have to press the throttle before you even encounter it as the engine might not have enough momentum to drive the car which can lead to the engine stalling, the major thing with internal combustion engines is that internal combustion happens a lot faster than the heat transfer from the external combustion. also stopping the engine can be more difficult because the engine will still keep running even if you shut the engine off completely, while internal combustion will stop the moment gas and air stop flowing in the engine. 3. The engines are generally bigger and also can be heavier so putting it in smaller vehicles can be a bit tricky, kind of why diesel engines aren't used in motorcycles because of their size, which it needs to be big because of the high compression ratio they have compared to petrol engines. 4. Also it's not really clean to the environment, because you are still burning fuel to drive the engine, it's just external combustion. Sure the engine doesn't use as much fuel for the same amount of time but it still uses fuel, although it depends on what kind of fuel you are using, you can run a stirling engine off of hot water, burning wood, coal, hell even your old high school books you have in your attic, but anything that creates a flame produces CO2 so not really green in reality, the engine has to run off heat, and if your using fuel to run the engine it really isn't that different from using an efficient petrol engine, it can be more efficient but has a few drawbacks as i mentioned. If you really want to be "green" public transit, and walkable and bikeable roads are the way to go, as they are way more space efficient, reduce polution to the atmosphere to the environment and to add they aren't as loud as thousands of cars, it's not really cities that are loud, cars are, and noise pollution has shown to have a negative impact to people's physical and mental health which has been found in a few studies. At the end of the day, the Stirling engine is best suited to use heat lost to the environment or using heat that is gone unused to drive the engine and serve purposes like being a heat pump, or being used as a generator for electricity, the engine isn't suited for driving vehicles though and i don't think it will ever make it to the automotive market, as people aren't really familiar with stirling engines, so no one would buy it. I mean people stick to what they know, they are uncomfortable to leave their comfort zone, and also stirling engines haven't had as much development as internal combustion engines have, so we don't know which variation of stirling engine would be best for each task or what heat source would be the best etc etc, it has been developing though over the years and can show some different use in the later future. If the engine would ever to go in the market though it might be in hybrid vehicles, but who knows, only time will tell.
@@call_me_mado5987 I'd sooner drive a Stirling engine powered car than the giant computer on wheels known as an EV. Of course, ill just stick with my Gasoline engine powered vehicles. Hopefully I'll be able to get an older car without all the microchips that the more modern ones are absolutely dependent on.
On the Mod I engine that the vehicles in this video were using, it was about 8.1 lbs/HP. The Mod 2 was much improved, and got down to 5.5 lbs/HP. For reference, the "Iron Duke" engine they were replacing in the Chevy Celebrity they put the Mod 2 into, it got about 4.1 lbs/HP.
EXCUSE ME THE COMMENT ABOUT STIRLINGS NOT LASTING IS FALSE. THEY HAVE RAN ONE UNDER FULL LOAD FOR FOURTEEN YEARS NO DOWN TIME OTHER THAN TO CHECK FOR ISSUES NO REPAIRS
Simply it wasn't cheaper, nor more efficient or simplier than internal combustion engines by 1992. By the way Stirling engines would burn classical oil products, so no lobbying to kill it.
Stirling engines can literally run on anything that produces heat. You COULD run it on petroleum, but you wouldnt have to. So big oil most likely did play a hand in killing it. The good news is that stirling engines can be made very simply by an individual out of junk you have lying around.
I think they will be using thermoacoustic engines for range extender’s on electrical vehicles now or should be. would be more officiant and the power to weight ratio much better and compact something I’ve been working on lately check it out might spark some ideas
Eu não entendo por que a indústria automobilística não produz carros com esse tipo de motor?Esses motores são ideias pra pessoas que vivem em regiões isoladas do mundo!Um motor que pode ser usado qualquer combustível.Nao esses motores de combustao interna que usam um tipo específico de combustível.Esse maldita elite financeira mundial não querem que a maioria das pessoas sejam independentes de seus lucros. D
wave of the future? what we been hearing for over one hundred years, Peak oil, flat earth, i just enjoy the show. it is all just talk. over population, threat of socialism, I say we all just move in the forest and live in a tree. relax take it easy, drink coffee and just stare into space. Leisure with dignity.
Move into the forest you say ❓❓❓❓ *WHOOPS* ‼️‼️‼️ you forgot to mention deforestation ... But, you are probably quite comfortable living under a rock ... Or ... is it in a cave ❓❓❓❓❓
this must be big big business rules and technology drools. at least this transportation does not lug around a ton of batteries. where can i buy a hot air Stirling car? :) china maybe?
What I want to know is how many MPG can this engine get? As of now, 11 years later, they are not on the market. There must be a reason. Can anyone help me here? Thanks.
It's true that a stirling engine is super economic, clean and quiet. The only problem is, it's fairly large. So it's unsuitable for vehicles, but it can be used for submarines and space probes. (especially for not necessarily using oxygen)
Wouldn't this be a great alternative for electric, without the range anxiety and charging time trouble. You just fill up in 3 minutes, this is way more convenient for people that can not charge at home. Lets promote this instead of Tesla!
yeah but the power density from those are pretty bad, also would smell really really bad for anyone near it. You could turn the old plastic into gasoline instead if you wanted, it's not super complex actually, and you won't have to have an asthma attack whenever you run the engine
The MOD II engine compensated for this particular problem by using pressurized hydrogen as the working gas. Two different tanks were used, one at 2900 psi, the other at 1450 psi. A digitally controlled mean pressure system switched between the two tanks as necessary during acceleration and deceleration, which helped keep the tank pressure as close to engine cylinder pressure to allow for a single-stage compressor to be used. These tanks were used in combination with a "short-circuit" system that allowed hydrogen to be shunted between the maximum and minimum pressure regions of the cylinders to immediately bleed power during deceleration. The hydrogen pressure control system is probably the true genius of this engine, and its cost and complexity may have been the real reason that it didn't get more serious consideration. It required digital engine control and was by design a drive-by-wire accelerator.
@@felixbeutin9530 Well, I think the timing was just poor. We have much better, faster and cheaper computer systems today, so the mean pressure system in the MOD II engine wouldn't be all that expensive these days. Still complex though, and it still takes advanced materials and very tight tolerances to use pressurized hydrogen as the working fluid in a Stirling. Will we someday see advanced hybrids that are basically plug-in EVs with a stirling range extender? Probably, but I'm guessing it'll be another 10-20 years.
It was too good. The government could not make enough money off it. They would have to sell gasoline to you at $150/gallon or something stupid. Can't have something hit the market where the government isn't constantly reaching into your wallet and stealing from you.
They are but not for cars. They are terriblwe at this apllication. They are great to provide electricity from waste heat though. So they could make a comeback for electric cars.
@@user-eq7ie4tc9e NASA already solved the problem with mod II, it was turned down, because the automakers didn't want to switch to a new engine type. especially one with no oil changes and piston seal life with 90 percent reliability after 3500 hours of constant use.
