4 ms·
The engine's waste heat heats the water. That's why it's efficient; some of the "waste" heat is recovered and put to use. A Stirling engine in particular needs
by Lagged2Death 12y ago
The engine's waste heat heats the water. That's why it's efficient; some of the "waste" heat is recovered and put to use.
A Stirling engine in particular needs an explicit heat sink to cool some parts of the mechanism; shuttling a working fluid (and its heat) back and forth between a hot end and a cold end is how it works. In this case, the cold end is the swimming pool.
- auxym 12y agoAny thermodynamic machine (gas turbines, ICEs, your fridge) needs a hot end and a cold end/heatsink. It's the second law [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
- Lagged2Death 12y agoYes, I know that, but in familiar cases (like an internal combustion engine) the heat sink is mainly just venting exhaust to the atmosphere. The heatsink exists as a part of the environment, almost an accident of the design. It's a sort of implicit heatsink as opposed to an explicit one.
- hrjet 12y agoGenuine question: if we wrap an IC engine with a heat sink that captures the excess heat for re-use, what do we get? And is overall more or less efficient than using the sterling engine in article?
- bryanlarsen 12y agoYes. It's less efficient, but not significantly so. The term you want to punch into Google for more information is "micro CHP" (combined heat & power).