Stirling engine
The Stirling engine was invented in 1816 by the Rev. Robert Stirling who sought to create a safer alternative to the steam engines of the time, whose boilers often exploded due to the high pressure of the steam and the primitive materials of the time. Stirling engines convert heat (actually, any temperature differential) directly to movement: they use a displacer piston to move enclosed air back and forth between cold and hot reservoirs. At the hot reservoir the air expands and pushes a power piston, producing work and displacing the air to the cold reservoir. There the air contracts and pulls the power piston, closing the cycle.
Stirling engines can also work in reverse: when applying motion, a temperature differential appears between the reservoirs. Incidentally, one of their modern uses is in supercooling. However they are difficult to construct and require precise machining, and thus never replaced the steam engine despite being much more fuel efficient than steam engines or even than the modern internal combustion and Diesel engines.
Stirling Engines come in three distinct types:
Stirling engine types
External links
Indexes
How it works
Information media
Do-It-Yourself model Stirling/Hot-Air maskiner
Applications