Collection: Creative Stirling Engine

How a Stirling Engine works
Stirling engines convert a temperature difference into motion. There is a hot side and a cold side to the engine. Provided there is a large enough temperature difference the engine will run. Stirling engines work by cyclically heating and cooling the air inside the main chamber. As the air heats up it expands, and as it cools down it contracts. This expansion and contraction drives a small piston which in turn drives the flywheel. The clever thing about Stirling engines is that the mechanism for cycling the heating and cooling of the air is built into the engine in the form of the displacer, which is driven by the flywheel and moves the air from the warm side to the cool side and back again over and over.

History of Stirling engines
The Stirling engine is named after its inventor, Rev. Robert Stirling, who patented his idea for a closed cycle hot air engine in 1816. He also invented the improvement known as an economiser which is known today as a regenerator. From around 1860 to around 1930 Stirling engines were produced in significant numbers. They were typically used for pumping water, as they had the benefit of being simple to use and only needing a fire; unlike a steam engine which needed water to begin with. By the 1930’s Stirling engines had been mostly replaced by piped water, combustion engines and increasingly by mains electric motors. Stirling engine generator was used as a means to recharge radio sets as mains electricity still wasn’t ubiquitous. By 1951, Sadly it was not commercially viable for numerous reasons including the introduction of transistors, better batteries and the spread of mains electricity. However all modern commercial Stirling engines can trace their ancestry back to these engines.