Slow-Mo Flame Eaters by Kel

[shred]

The fact that flame-suckers need hot gas to operate makes me wonder if it would be possible to power one from the exhaust gas coming off a steam boiler.

I know that once, while talking to a rather clueless tree-hugger, I mentioned utilizing waste heat. He was puzzled by the concept (yeah, well, they don't teach thermo in liberal arts schools) so I held one of my LTD Stirlings over the flue and he was dumbfounded by the fact that it ran.

That led me to visualize a flame-sucker operating from the flue gas with an LTD Stirling sitting on the sucker cylinder and running off its waste heat. If it could be made to work it would be a guaranteed show-stopper at a public exhibition.

If that won't work, how about a MTD (Medium Temperature Differential) Stirling with an LTD Stirling sitting on the MTD 'cold' plate? I'm almost certain that could be made to work.

It's a whole new avenue of engine modeling to explore - ganged engines.

And if the steam engine had steam for exhaust, it should be relatively easy to hook it up to a condensing engine-- the very first steam engines (skipping toys like Hero's) worked that way-- Newcomen, etc. Another 'freebie'!

It would make for a neat display of thermodynamics, but I bet a dollar it's not 5 minutes before a spectator wants to hook up the outputs to the inputs and get perpetual motion ???

We use heat-pipes for cooling electronic parts at work. They have surprisingly little 'resistance' when moving heat in their designed operating range. Could be useful for hooking up such things.