Sterling solar steam generator charged vehicle?
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Sure, but modern PV cells are much more efficient.
Wouldn't do much good unless the car was electric. If the car was electric, it would not do too much good because the amount of electricity it would produce might make the car move a couple of inches or so.
Talk about a $100,000, 1 ton solution to a problem that can be solved with $2000 worth of PV panels.
The Stirling engine is a closed-cycle piston heat engine. The term "closed-cycle" means that the working gas is permanently contained within the cylinder, unlike the "open-cycle" internal combustion engine and some steam engines, which vent the working fluid to the atmosphere. The Stirling engine is traditionally classified as an external combustion engine, despite the fact that heat can be supplied by non-combusting sources such as solar and nuclear energy. A Stirling engine operates through the use of an external heat source and an external heat sink, each maintained within a limited temperature range, and having a sufficiently large temperature difference between them.
The sterling engine is light weight and can be designed with a parabolic solar heat collector that is also light weight that could easily generate enough electricity to recharge electric car batteries. It doesnt weigh a ton, in fact such a system could easily be engineered to under 35 lbs.
Modern PV cells are entirely too bulky and talk about weighing too much! You'd need at least three 160kW panels (about 3ft X 4ft each) to do the work of a single sterling engine with a parabolic concentrating reflector. Solar cells are not even close to the efficiency of a DC generator!
However, what you propose is a very complex machine that would have to be taken down and set up each time you stop for any length of time. Not only that, the device you propose is very complex because it would need a solar tracking system built into it to keep it operating at peak efficiency. Then there is the problem of making sure you park in the sun all the time, which just isnt possible, then rainy or show days, and finally..
This device would need to be able to be locked down to the top of your vehicle because it would be what is called an attractive nuisance. Vandals and thievs would try to steal it or deface it or destroy it, even if they didnt know what it was...!!
Nice try Irene, but society isnt ready for this kind of idea...
It isnt near the efficiency, but better to make the hood, trunk, and roof of an electric vehicle out of carbon fiber with solar cells embedded and hooked up to a controller/charger. That way you could extend the range of your electric car, recharging even while you drive it.
Even in the tropics, the average insolation is about 0.6 to 0.75 kw/sq.m. Current best conversion efficiencies are about 14%. This translates to about 0.5 kwh/sq.m./day of uninterrupted shade free tropical sunlight.
Not quite sufficient for the intended purpose.. Sterling cycle is much less efficient than that.
The cost to make a practical sterling cycle engine to charge a 12v batter bank is uneconomical.
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