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Now you've got me wondering if you could design a reverse-stirling engine that runs off an intensely endothermic reaction of some sort.
by regularfry 6y ago
Now you've got me wondering if you could design a reverse-stirling engine that runs off an intensely endothermic reaction of some sort.
- jsilence 6y agoIt would still be a normal Stirling engine and not reverse. The engine only needs a large enough temperature differential. Where that comes from does not matter.
- jsilence 6y agoA reverse stirling engine takes mechanical energy and produces a temperature differential. These kinf of setups are actually being used for quite efficient cooling.
- D_Alex 6y agoYou could certainly run such an engine, very efficiently at that, from vaporisation of LNG.
- pjc50 6y agoThe engine only requires a "hot" side and a "cold" side, so there's no reason why the cold side can't be way below ambient temperature, such as an endothermic reaction or a tank of liquid nitrogen. Here's a video of a guy running one of those coffee-cup-top toy engines off liquid nitrogen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6eEvU5piQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6eEvU5piQg Some people have proposed this as yet another bulk energy storage system for the grid; giant underground cryotanks of liquid nitrogen. With careful design the same gear could be used in "forwards" or "reverse" mode. The limit is that the Carnot efficiency isn't great.