Muhaimin Iqbal
Author

Inspiring Technology From The Space Exploration

Advanced Renewable

Wed , 22 May 2024 17:30 WIB

Fourteen centuries ago, jinn and humans were challenged by the Creator to conquer the corners of heaven and earth (QS 55:33). If only we had been responsive to this challenge, the big problems of human civilization in heaven and on earth would have been resolved. Problems related to energy and emissions, for example, should be easier to overcome once we have mastered space exploration.

For example, several years ago NASA released one of its energy technologies. What was released was actually the invention of a 19th century Scottish scientist, Robert Stirling, which later became known as the Stirling engine. It's just that after being redesigned by NASA, the Stirling engine can become a very reliable energy engine and can operate for decades - without needing maintenance, because up there in space there are certainly no workshops to maintain it!

This Stirling engine is a simple energy machine, essentially heat will expand the gas, and the expanding gas will move the lever, and the back and forth movement of this lever creates a magnetic field which then becomes electricity. Because the working principle is simple, there is only one moving part which become the reason why it is reliable and does not need the maintenance mentioned above.

What if we improve the machine that NASA has made from the work of Robert Stirling further? The result is like the one in this picture. Because this simple machine has the weakness that it is no longer simple when it has to be made big, so with the help of AI we still design small machines with a capacity of only around 1 kW, we call them Stirling Cells (StirCell).

To achieve the large capacity we need on earth, all we have to do is create a platform to insert the tip of the StirCell into a heat source that will be converted into electricity. As a result, several MW of electricity can be produced from this platform which contains thousands of StirCells.

Because it is an External Combustion Engine (ECE), the heat source can be very varied. It's like burning rubbish in a furnace, then inserting the tip of the Stircell into one of the holes in the furnace, it will produce very reliable electricity already, as long as the furnace is on, it will continue to produce electricity. This will be a new way to harvest waste heat and convert it into electricity that is easy, efficient and has no new emissionss.