Acrylic Fluidyne Engine

This is a Fluidyne engine made from acrylic to a design from the book Liquid Piston Stirling Engines by C D West.
The displacer cold column is on the right, the hot column in the centre and the tuning column is on the left.
The heat source is a 33 ohm resistor driven from a 15 volt power pack so the power input is about 6.8 Watts.
The working fluid is water with a little ink in it to make it more visible.
In a bigger engine, the varying head in the tuning column can be used to drive a pump or perform other useful work.
Morris Dovey in the United States is working on a full sized, solar powered pump for use in third world countries. You can see his project on http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Stirling/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Acrylic
• Fluidyne
• Engine

[desiredusername]

Very nice engine and video! I've read West's book and he talks about fluidynes being used as direct pumps, not electrical generators. But it seems like this could be done.  Maybe a floating magnet?

[AussieJimG]

Thank you. This is the first Fluidyne I have been able to get running so I have not thought much beyond the fact that it runs at all. Now you have me thinking about magnetic fluids, sealed and pressurised engines ,,, lots of room for playing.

[desiredusername]

Before I watched this video, I was thinking of magnetic fluid too. But you said that oil won't work, so that's out. Although presumably the engine could be modified to run on oil?

[AussieJimG]

Oil wont work in the displacer section but it should be possible to use oil in the tuning/output column. And something better than water in the displacer - West mentions sugar in the water.

[haeresy]

have you considered or tried running saltwater through it instead? Also considering that this could be built from quartz it could/maybe have an piezoelectric ability.

[ericasw28]

Yep, it is, but it's the challenge of our century. Simulink can be a really great help, as well as LabView! and i believe that tracking the sun in closed loop can be done (look at Planmix, he has done wonderful things), or calculated with basic sin/cos sun positioning angle calculation. If i may, keep trying building robust apparatus, cause it has been shown that mechanical failures are the most frequent causes of efficiency drops. i'd be really glad to see a project like that born and grow !

[Lubobuba]

Great understanding. Currently I am working on high precision solar concentrator positioning and monitoring through embedded control. This will be work that I will have hopefully finished by the end of next year (not that it has not been done yet - I have not done it :) ) One of the my plans for utilization of the energy captured is trough a liquid piston machine. However positive I am on that, I would not make the big step and promise, anything whatsoever.The complexity of this endeavor huge...

[ericasw28]

so let's create some businesses on that ! I've been in Africa two weeks ago, and had the chance to talk with major electricity companies responsibles. I can guarantee there is a real market there. Improve efficiency, develop your machine with parabolic mirrors, make it portable on trucks, and go sell it. i don't think the initial investment would be so hard or investors wouldn't show up

[Lubobuba]

Agree completely. I had the honor to put my hands on the books from C.D. West and Allan Organ and others, and I can only agree, that the liquid piston fluidyne has the potential to increase life standards in poorer countries, as in not so poor countries too.

[ericasw28]

even so, think about its applications in poor countries. you could pump water out at a very low cost, and even make it drinkable by solar boiling or this kind of things

[Lubobuba]

By doing so, temperature ranges in theory vary from cryogenic to appr. 1000 Kelvin, and therefore the theorethical efficiency for the fluidyne stirling cycle was proposed to be 95% by James D. Van de Ven

[Lubobuba]

Great explanation. Evaporation is usefull, and not. Since water evaporates, there is a working range of roughly 100 Kelvin in which the fluidyne can operate, which restricts it to an low carnot efficiency. Work is being done in acadamies in the world, for replacing water with a more suitable fluid.

[SWINGREGORY]

COOOL

[roidroid]

it's great to finally see a video explaining these fluid Stirling engines.

youtube user "mdevink" often has these weird fluid Stirling videos but i've never understood quite how they work.