Page 1 of 1

How much power is needed..

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 2:29 pm
by st15jap78
How big of a Stirling engine would it take to turn a generator like
the ones you would see a water turbine turn in a dam.To be more
specific, physical size, range of B.T.U it would take to do something
like this. if i need to be more specific please let me know, thanks Jason


Response to How much power is needed..

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 2:38 pm
by cchagnot
Jason,

You do indeed need to be a great deal more specific. But the ones used in dams are
usually large. Very large. In the MegaWatt range or much higher. At that size theoretical
Stirling engines do not compete with steam turbines, which can be run on biomass, even
solar energy if one has enough of it. Besides, it's not the turbine one would drive with the
Stirling Engine but the generator that the turbine drives.


Cate

Response to How much power is needed..

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 2:48 pm
by cchagnot
Sorry,

I misread your message about driving the generator so forget my last comment about driving
the generator...
However they're still very large and practical Stirling engines today (and likely for the
foreseeable future) are in the Kilowatt range.

Cate

Response to How much power is needed..

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 3:07 pm
by st15jap78
Thanks for your input. to be a little more specific,how big would a Stirling engine have to be to produce Kilowatt(s) per hour.
Also how much heat would it take to run a setup like this?
Or the temperature difference between the hot and cool cylinders.
Jason

Response to How much power is needed..

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 3:17 pm
by cchagnot
Jason,

Go to http://www.ent.ohiou.edu/~urieli/stirli ... /beta.html and do a little study
about the different types of Stirling engines out there. At 25% efficiency, A Stirling Engine
would need a heat input of 4 Kw to produce 1kw of shaft power. Run it for an hour and
you have 1KWH...
There's plenty of info on the web and this forum.
You can go to http://www.Stirling-tech.com to see a 5HP (3.7KW) shaft output Biomass
fired Stirling engine made for developing countries.

Cate

Cate

How much power is needed..

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 3:48 pm
by stan.hornbaker
This is a moot question. We deal in questions with regard to Stirling engines only. Select a size of hydro turbine generator, convert the output power to input HP allowing for efficiency factor to determine the input HP to the generator. Now as to a Stirling engine to drive a generator you have to first know the input and output temperatures in absolute terms to calculate the maximum possible Carnot efficiency in those terms and again allow for the likely realized efficiency of a specific Stirling engine design. In any event this would turn out to be a very unrealistic size for a Stirling engine as 5-HP is the maximum size likely to come to market any time in the near future. All else is idle speculation.