micro stirling engines?

[dalcazar]

Does anyone know if a very small stirling engine is made? I need to dissipate 800W of heat from a surface 5mm square and need to keep the stirling engine small (as in very small) Can any of you point me to something that would fit the application?

 

[davefitz]

see <

http://www.infiniacorp.com>

 

[KiwiMace]

http://www.whispergen.com/

 

[unclesyd]

You might want to give NASA tech papers a shot as they have done a lot of work with free piston heater and coolers. Another avenue for heat removal might be a heat pipe and again NASA has done lot of work in this area.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp

 

[cpretty]

One is in development at the moment for use in PC's

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/9051/msi_employees_stirling_engine_theory/index.html

In its infancy unfortunately.

 

[dalcazar]

thanks for the replies guys, I've seen both those stirling engine websites before and they are massively oversized, but the heat pipe idea sounds like a very plausible way to go about it, designing it might be a bit hard however because of the high temperature difference. Can you point me to any books that would have a section on heat pipe design?

 

[unclesyd]

There are quite a number of books on the design of Heat Pipes. A lot these books were the offshoot of work being carried out for NASA.

Here are some additional site that may be of help.

I think it would well worth the effort to give Metafoam a call. The may not have a working system but could possibly point you in the right direction.

http://www.metafoam.com/500W.html

These two companies are mentioned in a lot of literature on working with heat pipes especially in cooling

http://www.thermacore.com/

http://www.1-act.com/index.html

Here is a Magazine that may be of interest to you.

http://electronics-ooling.com/articles/1996/sep/sep96_02.php