The Air Engine: Stirling Cycle Power for a Sustainable Future

Two centuries after the original invention, the Stirling engine is now a commercial reality as the core component of domestic CHP (combined heat and power) - a technology offering substantial savings in raw energy utilization relative to centralized power generation. The threat of climate change requires a net reduction in hydrocarbon consumption and in emissions of 'greenhouse' gases whilst sustaining economic growth. Development of technologies such as CHP addresses both these needs. Meeting the challenge involves addressing a range of issues: a long-standing mismatch between inherently favourable internal efficiency and wasteful external heating provision; a dearth of heat transfer and flow data appropriate to the task of first-principles design; the limited rpm capability when operating with air (and nitrogen) as working fluid. All of these matters are explored in depth in The air engine: Stirling cycle power for a sustainable future. The account includes previously unpublished insights into the personality and potential of two related regenerative prime movers - the pressure-wave and thermal-lag engines.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 A long overdue re-appraisal: The famous engine that never was; What Carnot efficiency? The counter-flow spiral heat exchanger - Spirex; A high-recovery-ratio combustion chamber. Part 2 Living with incompressible flow data: The regenerator problem brought down to size; The regenerative annulus and shuttle heat transfer; The rotating-displacer air engine; The strange case of the self-regulating air engine; Some light on the inner workings of the thermal lag engine. Part 3 Working with the reality of compressible flow: New correlations for old; Regenerator thermal analysis - un-finished business; Flow passage geometry; Beyond the performance envelope; For the sceptics. Part 4 Some design considerations: Scaling - and the neglected art of back-of-the-envelope calculation. 'How to make a business out of Stirling Engines today'.

About the Author :
Allan J Organ, PhD, DEng, ScD, FIMechE is known internationally for his work on Stirling engines. He is author of some 50 technical papers and four highly regarded texts on regenerative thermal cycles. The material and its treatment reflect experience accumulated over four-and-a-half decades of university research in the UK, Canada and South America.