Eli5, even if they are not the most efficient or powerful things, why are stirling engines not sprinkled everywhere where there is a decent amount of thermal differential? or energy to recapture, Like in power plant cooling systems or other places where there’s lots of “waste heat” as a byproduct.
In: Engineering
The energy you get from most tiny differentials is, well, tiny. The expense to set up and maintain a Stirling engine is not tiny. It often would interfere with the function of the system you installed it on.
Like, at a power plant that waste heat needs to be dumped to avoid things like the plant melting itself or blowing up. A Stirling engine would get in the way of that cooling process. At best, you would just reduce the efficiency of the main turbine, offsetting whatever gains you would have gotten in exchange for more cost to maintain this other not as good engine.
If the energy differential *is* big enough to be worth capturing that energy flow to produce usable energy… there are almost certainly more efficient engines or turbines, and people will just use those.
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