Sunday, April 30, 2006

Stirling Engines and Heat Pumps

Just read this post. In the comments there is a link to Heat Pumps & some talk about their use.

My comment was...

Why would you get a headache?

You have a heat to motion to electric power system, where part of the electric output is feed back into the system to improve efficiency and/or decrease the cost of the total system.


How is this so. Well if you use the heat pump to 'focus' the heat into a 'point' of higher temperature, you can do two things. Increase its efficiency (by changing the hot-end temperature & thus the hot-end cool-end ratios, as measures in degree K). You can also use the smaller & cheaper (per unit of energy output) stirling engine.

Anyway, that how I read it. Comment welcomed!

John Maynard Keynes

On ANZAC day, I had a broswe at Academic Remainders

They had a biography of John Maynard Keynes.

Paperback: 1056 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (August 30, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 0143036157
I think this is the one. The cover art at amazon is different.

I was aware of Keynes generally and had skimmed his work 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace' on the net a few year back. A very interesting overview on the centery before the Great War and the likely (prophectic) effects of the Treaty of Versailles (1919).

It's a very interesting book, but not light reading.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Meet Sid & Nancy, the Stirling Engines.

I have also just found these pics

The interesting ones are:

Inside the AASTINO, jetfuel from the stirling engine has leaked and caused the blue anti-static map to bubble - and it stinks.

Sid the Stirling engine arrives on a sled behind the skidoo

Nancy the Stirling engines heads back to the factory

Jon fits the engine cover onto Nancy

Jon fills the Stirling engine with coolant

So, what can we tell from these pics & their caption.

They run on 'Jetfuel', so I'll assume they mean 'avgas', unless someone cares to correct me.

Therefore the Stirling engines are High Temperature Differential (HTD) engines. Their relatively small size seams confirms this.

The 'coolant' is Glycol, I assume this mean that the operating fluid is Glycol.

Update:

More googling shows what I expected, they are Whispergen engines, made by Whisper Tech in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Stirling Engines - Polar usage

Just found this post, dated 11th January, 2002.

Someone has a Stirling engine in Antartica


Our traveling companions include the Brothers Pernic (Ed and Bob - Bob is the site manager at South Pole for the astronomy project; Ed is the last in a long line of people who've tried to get the TEG working, and is busting to see the Stirling engine) and Wilfred Walsh - a PhD graduate from UNSW Astrophysics.


It would be interesting to findout is stats.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

I hate morning news TV. Its just an ad!

Saw something funny on Today, yesterday morning. They had in interview with an author of a book about communicating the children.

The Author commented that kids are bored with life, loser parents etc and that they amerce themselves in computer games, mind dead TV etc as a results.

You should have seen the male host trying to cover Today’s arse! It was so funny. The Author did throw him a lifeline by saying Today had some educational value. ;)