Stirling Engines - the power of the future?

>unironically watching lindyfag

>>8511613
They are incredibly expensive at the industrial level and produce an extraordinarily small amount of torque relative to their size.

No. Stirling engines are a neat toy, but if you already have heat then there are better ways of extracting work from it than a Stirling engine. If they were, we would already be using them.

Also Lindy doesn't believe in global warming.

>>8511731
Ive never heard of him, but I guess he's not totally retarded then.

>>8511613
Stirling engines are cool, but they don't really have many practical uses. The don't have the power density of internal combustion engines, and they can't compete with big turbines for thermal efficacy. They're only really useful if you want a small, low power, efficient heat engine.

I could see them having usees if you have access to a convenient thermal gradient, for instance if you happen to have a cold mountain stream running through your land and you use these by cooling the bottom with water and having the top warmed by sunlight, but it seems a bit finicky.

>>8511731
My opinion of him just went up a little.

Also, Stirlings have a few applications, but they're more useful when you run them backwards, to produce cooling.

Semi-related question: how do Stirling engines compare to thermoelectric generators? I know the latter are less efficient, but I don't know how the life-cycle costs or MTBFs compare.

>>8512031
go back to /pol/

>>8511731
>Also Lindy doesn't believe in global warming.
>>having to drop this into irrelevant conversation
You just can't get over it can you?

>>8512045
it's speaks volumes to the limits of his critical thinking capabilities

but he's a historian first, and I don't really care if my historians can't think too good, so whatever

>>8511661
>produce an extraordinarily small amount of torque relative to their size.
Not necessarily, though I can see why you might view them that way. Stirling engines are most frequently designed to operate using air at/near ambient pressure for simplicity's sake, and often with very small (and fundamentally inefficient, as per Carnot) temperature gradients (just because they can, where other engines cannot). These factors combined mean that the TYPICAL Stirling engine does indeed have rather low output power/torque.

However, if you were to design a Stirling engine to operate over a larger temperature gradient and at higher internal pressure (as you would a typical steam engine), power density would improve considerably.

>>8511851
>The don't have the power density of internal combustion engines
Well no shit, but neither do steam engines. Doesn't make them useless. There are lots of applications where internal combustion is impractical (coal, or the bottoming cycle of a combined-cycle engine), or where combustion doesn't even apply at all (i.e. nuclear, solar-thermal or geothermal power).

>>8512031
>how do Stirling engines compare to thermoelectric generators? I know the latter are less efficient, but I don't know how the life-cycle costs or MTBFs compare.
I imagine TEGs are a lot more reliable, but a lot more expensive per unit power even over the long term. But to be fair, I'm not that familiar with TEGs.

>>8511731
where did he state this?

>>8512152
He did a bunch of videos on it a few years back. I REALLY don't recommend looking them up - they're nothing but him reciting the kind of brainless "gotcha" arguments you'll find here (CO2 rise lags behind warming!, scientists are money-hungry frauds!), and it's really depressing to watch.

>>8512294
>"gotcha" arguments
...when your claims are shown to be false

>>8512373
>...when your claims are shown to be false
What?

I just mean the arguments weren't broad or particularly constructive, they were "all of climatology is wrong because of X" type things. You know, the kind of objects you see lists of on denier blogs, rather than the type of arguments you see in actual scientific discussions.