Rossi: Can't Find Stirling Engine Fit for Purpose

If you remember, a few weeks ago Andrea Rossi put out a request on the Journal of Nuclear Physics, asking if anyone had a Stirling Engine that might be suitable to work with an E-Cat. He said, “Please send your proposals for Sterling Engines to be coupled with the E-Cats (power 5 kW and 10 kW). The best offers will be bought for testing.”

When a reader asked Rossi today if there had been any suitable proposals made, he replied:

I arrived to the conclusion that does not exist any Sterling Engine mature for an application to the E-Cat. We received many proposals regarding concepts, prototypes to be developed: we need a product off the shelf.

I suppose it’s not terribly hard to understand why this might be the case — Stirling engines are not the kind of thing one finds in an industrial or domestic setting these days. I can’t think when I have seen one in operation outside a demonstration model, so commercial units are probably quite unusual, and Rossi doesn’t want to have to deal with underdeveloped Sterling engines.

For those unfamiliar with Stirling engines, they are relatively simple machines which run on a principle of air expansion and compression caused by the difference in temperature between hot and cold cylinders. The constant heat of an E-Cat makes a Stirling engine an attractive option, but apparently Rossi has yet to come across one that suitable yet. I’m sure he’s open to future offers, however.

Below is a short video demonstrating a small Stirling engine at work.