Today I bought a super cool little Stirling Cycle Engine at a garage sale in Billings Park. It was missing the alcohol burner but was otherwise intact and it also had the original owner’s manual and a book about Stirling Cycle Engines. A bargain at $14.
I tried a candle as an initial heat source, but it didn’t put out enough heat. My propane torch, a $4 garage sale find from last year, provided plenty of heat, however and the engine hummed to life.
A Stirling Cycle Engine needs only a heat differential and air to run, so my next experiment will involve a big Fresnel lens to power the engine with concentrated sunlight.
There is a small pulley on the shaft between the two flywheels so I could run a belt and use the rotational energy for something, but I’m not sure what that would be. But the engine itself is very nifty.
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