Hi, I've been reading this forum and there seems to be a number of very knowledgeable people here so I thought I might ask for your comments and criticisms regarding the feasibility of a design idea that came to me while I was working on trying to design a more efficient solar powered Stirling Generator.
I thought I might need a cooling system to carry off excess heat from the engine and got interested in the "Air-Cycle System" for the reason that like the Stirling engine itself, plain old air can be used as the working fluid and also because it is said to create extreme temperature differentials, more so than any other conventional refrigeration system primarily due to the fact that it utilizes a turbo-expander (used to cool gases in cryogenic processes, gas liquefaction and other cold temperature applications.)
I thought that this would be ideal in that the Stirling engine itself RUNS ON temperature differentials.
I came up with a few designs and as I was imagining this machine running and following through all the processes going on it seemed to dawn on me that this could indeed be a very efficient engine... Perhaps so efficient that it didn't even need a solar collector as once it was charged with compressed air and began operating it seemed to me that the addition of any additional heat would possibly be too much heat... The thing, it seemed to my mind, was actually running just on the solar energy stored in the air at ambient temperatures.
I have a few crude illustrations which I've uploaded:
Link: Stirling Air Turbine I (Removed)
Link: Stirling Air Turbine II (Removed)
I have also been discussing this on some other forums for a while now, which might be helpful in case anyone wants more information about it before commenting as the theory and design have already been discussed in some detail:
Link: Stirling Engine Forum (Removed)
Link: Science Forum (Beginning with post #58 "Stirling Turbine") (Removed)
I'm planning on trying to build a small model just to see if this thing works, but right now I don't have the facilities or equipment for that. In the mean time I thought I would get some other opinions.
Somehow I have some difficulty believing that this could work, but I've also been having a hard time figuring out any good reason why it wouldn't. I suppose there are mathematical formulas for figuring out the specifications for something like this but I'm not a mathematician.
Any comments for or against this idea would be most welcome.
Thanks.
Tom
P.S. I received the following message upon posting:
The error returned was:
Sorry, your post contains link(s), which are not allowed. New members are not allowed to make a post here linking elsewhere. Please remove all links from you post.
(Links Removed)
So... How long does this "New Member" status last ? Or is there some other way to link to this stuff ?