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If you could build a stirling engine with enough horsepower, it could potentially be a great racecar engine.
The biggest issue with the use of a stirling engine to power a car is the time needed to warm the engine up; in a racecar this would be a non-issue, since the engine could be heated up before
the race starts -- as early as we desire.
We don't even need to make then engine burn fuel to heat itself up for racing -- we can preheat the engine using an external power supply.
The simplest way would be to build into it an electrical resistance heater.
A much cooler way to preheat the engine would be to use an external, removable, electric motor, which would run the engine backwards, forcing the engine to pump heat from the "cold" side of the engine to the "hot" side of the engine.
A secondary issue is changing speeds, but this can be solved with a CVT or IVT transmission.
We might even be able to perform a limited amount of regenerative braking, by forcing the engine to run backwards when we want to slow down.
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Burn moss peat to heat the engine up, and you have a Stirling Moss racecar. |
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Oh, I'm not planning on removing the fuel from the car *entirely*, merely avoiding using fuel to warm up the car's engine -- a task which could require as much as two or three minutes, starting from a cold engine, using fuel alone. |
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[+] I'd like to see this. At least this season of F1 has regenerative braking. KERS or curse, the jury is still out. |
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Unfortunately, the biggest issue with using a Stirling engine to power a car is NOT the warm up time (which is actually quite short) but the tiny power output. I've built a Stirling, it takes about 10 seconds to warm up but produces enough power to turn a small fan, from an engine weighing the same as a 1HP internal combustion engine.
Also, heat is a poor energy storage medium. |
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//Also, heat is a poor energy storage medium// |
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As goldbb said, you take the fuel with you. Or do you ? How about solar concentrating towers that can track and aim a beam of concentrated sunlight (or lasers or microwaves) at each car ?. That could be fun. Different power levels for different stages of a race. "The next 5 laps will be run by viewer request at 20 watts, muahahaha." |
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[Twizz]: Don't most modern stirlings have a heat-recapture device between the hot and cold regions? |
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