Solar Powered Stirling Like Engine

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Published 2011-02-08

www.BuildSomethingUseful.com/ This is a small motor I built. It is definitely an external combustion engine but is it a Stirling Engine? I've heard it referred to as a Hot Air Engine and a Lamina Flow Engine. Whatever you call it, it can run with the heat from the sun and that's pretty cool.

All Comments (21)

@JebacPresretac101 10 years ago

Damn, my first wish when i saw your video was: "if only someone would create a wiki for stuff like this for people like me with no/zero experience". And damn, you almost made one :) Thanks, man!
@jimmartin7899 7 years ago

Use a solar vacuum tube fill it with gallium and use the heat plug to drive the Sterling engine. Farmers could use this type of engine to run pumps to water fields and pumps in hydroponic greens houses.
@BuildSomethingUseful 12 years ago

@AlBarathur I hear you. I would use a very thin walled stainless steel but the thermal conductivity of stainless steel is right between glass and aluminum according to a quick google search.
@BenTvHowman 8 years ago

Great minds think alike, while I thought of this you took action. I love it your awesome
@piscuajo 11 years ago

muy inspirador ,dan gnas de inventar !! gracias amigo
@BuildSomethingUseful 12 years ago

@moabseeker I'm glad you like it, thanks for commenting.
@Dr_Xyzt 7 years ago

Neat. I'm gonna give this a shot.
@AlBarathur 12 years ago

What you needed was a black metal ring fit on the tube where the sunlight hits to spread the heat and avoid the crack. The crack occurred because sunlight heated some thin filament of metal to a very high temperature causing thermal stress on the glass tube. To be honest I find people needlessly use glass tubes for these engines, all that you need is to know exactly the length of the steel wool section inside the tube, and adjust the flame using the measurements and use a metal tube instead.
@moabseeker 12 years ago

Great Video!
@Slovflyer 11 years ago

I read somewhere that MSI is looking to make tiny stirling powered cooling fans for CPU/GPU, I imagine it would take some shrinking down of the Stirling engine's parts involved to make it practical, compared to our near pancake sized DC fans we use in cooling PC's (CPU/GPU) today.
@BuildSomethingUseful 12 years ago

@AlBarathur Yes, I think glass is a very bad idea when it comes to using the sun and a magnifying glass. A larger fresnel lens would probably even melt the glass. I'm going to start using stainless steel some time in the future.
@adfgfds 13 years ago

It looks like you also got the steel wool a lot closer to the support column than I do. Maybe I should try adding more in.
@AlBarathur 12 years ago

@BuildSomethingUseful Keep in mind though that metal conduct heat differently than glass. If the whole pipe is metal, you might need some serous heat dissipation, or maybe not, it is hard to tell
@alonsovelo5597 10 years ago

Awesome video and engine!! Just one question: what is the black thing in the left??
@nedstar7378 2 years ago

You can control the temperature from sunlight if you take the lens out of focus
@BuildSomethingUseful 12 years ago

@RMSSSANTOS Gracias.
@rodolfankyanhari 10 years ago

amazing, bravo
@gregsbest 10 years ago

Thanks for the clearly explained video, look forward to more. One question: what are you using for the test tube 'piston'- the black item? oiled-cork ? or oiled-plastic ? Cheers, Gk.
@SavageInsight 11 years ago

I wonder if you can run a heat engine like this from the heatbuildup of machines like a laptop, oven, fireplace, etc. I wonder what you'd use something like that for, but it has serious potential. I'll look into it.
@johngagne1 13 years ago

Robert Stirling only invented the regenerator concept which increases efficiency. So without a regenerator, it is just a heat engine. Very nice and simple one though.