Investigation on effective operating variables in gamma-type Stirling engine performance: a simulation approach

Abstract

The Stirling engine is one of the engines that has become popular due to its many advantages. Nowadays, lack of fossil fuels has led to a lot of attention to the use of renewable energies. For this reason, solar energy has drawn a lot of attention to be used as the Stirling engine heat source. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of a proposed Stirling engine in different engine speeds, pressures, and working fluids. The proposed Stirling engine is of gamma-type. This engine is simulated using the Nlog code which is written for this engine in MATLAB work space. This code was validated by experimental data in our previous works. The investigated fluids in this study are helium, nitrogen, and hydrogen. It was found that the best fluid for the proposed Stirling engine is hydrogen, and the best engine speed is 1300 rpm. Also, the higher the engine pressure, the more the output work will be.