FYI solar news January 06, 2010, 01:06:22 pm Yahoo Message Number: 109040Are Engines the Future of Solar Power?Stirling engines might be the best way to harvest the power provided by the sun http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-engines-the-future-of-solar-power&sc=WR_20100106 Gini Free and Junah, canine xtrodinaire "Kooch" our little red home on wheels "Growing old is mandatory. Growing wise is optional."[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: FYI solar news Reply #1 – January 07, 2010, 09:04:34 am Yahoo Message Number: 109048Mazda had a Sterling-cycle engine in the Milennia sedan when it first hit the market. It was replaced by a conventional piston engine afterabout a year on the market.
Re: FYI solar news Reply #2 – January 07, 2010, 10:18:19 am Yahoo Message Number: 109050"Mazda had a Sterling-cycle engine in the Milennia sedan when it first hit the market." Stirling (external-combustion) engines have never made it into production cars, although Ford and AMC built experimental vehicles using them. Drawbacks including long startup time, poor acceleration response, long shutdown time, excessive weight per horsepower, and the need for radiators twice as large as those used by internal-combustion engines killed those projects, as well as a NASA attempt to put a Stirling engine in a Chevy Celebrity. The Milennia's original engine was a Miller cycle engine--a supercharged internal-combustion engine with modified valve timing that supposedly gave it extra power. It was a flop.Andy Baird http://www.andybaird.com/travels/
Topic: FYI solar news (Read 3 times)
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