AKAImBatman's Journal: Come Dream With Me: Stirling Engines

As the price of gas surged past $3.00 a gallon, many consumers began to wake up to more efficient road vehicles such as hybrid cars. These cars reduce your overall costs by requiring less gas at the pump for the same range. Unfortunately, such savings are bound to be only a temporary fix. Oil prices have dropped back down for the moment, but they're still sitting at some of the highest prices in the history of the modern world. To avoid a transportation collapse (which would result in an economic collapse), we need to reduce our dependency on oil. And fast.

This week's article is part of a new series of articles I'm introducing called, "Come Dream With Me." This series is intended to showcase existing technologies that can be used to make our everyday lives better and our futures brighter. All we need to do is develop them.

The current episode is a two parter focused on Stirling Engines in both planes and cars. Let me know what you think. My hope is that everyone will learn a little something that will help them in the future. :-)

Re:you

[AKAImBatman]

Corrected. Thanks for the heads up! :-)

stirling engine aren't new

[budgenator]

They were developed in the early steam era by a minister who had grown tired of hearing about workers maimed by steam boiler explosions. The same primative metals that made developing truly effeicent stirling engines impossible, made steam engine boilers deadly. Metal technology developed enough to reduce the boiler explosions to an exceptable number which caused stirling devopemnt to wain.

Several other interesting aspects of stirling engines are they don't particulary care where the heat comes from, Concen

Re:stirling engine aren't new

[AKAImBatman]

From the article: "Stirling engines don't really push the limits of materials in any significant way. In fact, it's quite possible that they would have replaced steam locomotives had useful steel been invented earlier. Sadly, the iron technologies of the late nineteenth century were unsuitable for a proper Striling engine, so the idea was shelved."

Since it's difficult to pack that much info into a single article (especially given all the other material I was covering) I was hoping that people would take tha

Re:Why not Nuclear?

[AKAImBatman]

If it would work, I'd agree with you. Sadly, no one has ever managed to create a safe reactor that's small enough to fit in a car. Until such a thing is invented, we're going to have to satisfy ourselves with trying to replace the engines on merchant ships.