New sterling engine, what you think?

[stuartiannaylor]

http://www.qalovis.com/gb/landwirtschaft/biomasseverwertung/stirling_motor.php?hn2=true

I have been trying to find true comercial sterling generator products and struggling this one is the only one I could find in the 35kW range.

Any heat techies and biomass guru's out there to give this thing a run down ?

[Ivan]

They are certainly few and far between. There was a nice one being produced in Eastern Europe (looked very simlar to the one in the diagram, but I guess a lot of them look like that). Billi will probably remember which company it is, as they teamed up with a german pellet boiler manufacturer. I think it was called 'Sunpower' or something equally innovative...... 3kW, e5000. I have a feeling the company ended up in financial trouble.

[noah]

Sterling engine:sounds very Keynesian.

[KenB]

I do wish that people would make some attempt to get the spelling of Stirling engine correct.  It is named after the Reverend Robert Stirling - and not the British currency. 

It's as bad as getting Stevenson, Bolt-on, Wott, Witwerth, Broonel and Wittle all wrong - just sloppy spelling like our transatlantic chums.

If you remember how to spell it correctly - you might have a bit more success with search engines, such as Googel 

On a lighter note Stirling Technology Inc (google them) have suggested that the 5hp ST 5 Stirling engine may soon be on the market for as little as $4000 - but you'll need a fairly large shed to house it in.  There's a couple of Youtubes showing it running - its only been 30 years in gestation.

Personally, I think a more direct route to biomass derived small scale power is gasification of woody biomass and a converted spark ignition engine.



Ken

[stuartiannaylor]

Just wondered as at 35kW its the biggest current commercial sterling generator I have seen.
It was more to the effciencies and output.

As I say its always good to here your thoughts

[johnrae]

It's   Stirling 
here   hear
would   wood
to   too   two
tee   tea

gh = f  unless it's used in a Scot's content
ph = f

and z = zed

Oh what a wonderful language, no wonder our colonial cousins are lost

[stuartiannaylor]

I was waiting for that, lol.

Like I apologise for my spieling, terrible init.

But on a more serious note some input to renewables, maybe the application of the post. Would be seriously more interesting.

Would you like to comment on "New sterling engine, what you think?". I am trying to get to grips with the technology as does it pose a solution.
I know the innovation technologies on here are new and maybe not fit for current proposes, but the early cars could be discounted as loud useless things.
Its all about refining idea's and inventions and that is why we ended up with a Model T. From bricks, sterlings and steam rotaries are these possibilities or just a cul de sac requiring a u turn.

Stuart

[renewablejohn]

Just wondered as at 35kW its the biggest current commercial sterling generator I have seen.
It was more to the effciencies and output.

As I say its always good to here your thoughts

Looking at the website you quoted it would appear to be a cyclone power engine licensed to a german company. In their application a gasifier is used to produce woodgas which then heats the stirling with efficiency quoted under 30%. So why would you bother when the same gasifier could with a capstone turbo prop generate in excess of 30% and link it to a combined cycle steam turbine to bring the efficiency upto 40%. Number of moving parts in a stirling engine lots, in a capstone only 1 in a steam turbine only 1. To me stirling is a dead end technology

[KenB]

Stuart,

I have been following Stirling engine progress since 1990, and have seen numerous "commercial" projects fail and just become money sinks.

Most of the technical challenges with the modern Stirling were solved by Philips between 1937 and 1980, and continued by United Stirling, SunPower and others since then.

The 35kW machine you have found is based on work on wood fired engines by Dr. Henrik Carlsen of the Danish Technical University, and latterly Danish company, Stirling.DK

You could try Solo Kleinmotoren of Sindelfingen, Stuttgart - they took over a 10kW engine called the V160 from United Stirling with the aim of producing a gas fired CHP system.

British Gas researched small Stirlings in the late 80's and 90's at their Research Department in Loughborough, and later by the now bust Microgen - and some of this work evaluated two small Stirlings from SunPower and Whispertech.  Subsequently both of the Sunpower free piston engine and the 4 cylinder modified wobble-plate engine from Whispertech have been incorporated into small domestic CHP systems.

Neither product is particulatly cheap - I think about £8K for the Whispergen from Victron Energie, and a little less for the Sunpower machine packaged into a condensing gas boiler by Baxi, called the Ecogen.




Ken