No stirling is not cheap - yet, but it is mostly a matter of large volume production. What Whispergen and their partner Spanish industrial giant Mondragon have is a very reliable and well developed design that has been tested over the last 10 years in large numbers and that can now run for years at a time.
Natural Gas powered CHP stirling has a lot of complexity. It needs very expensive superalloy heater surfaces with lots of fins or tubes to increase heat transfer surface area due to the low density of combustion gases (one of bigger costs), also fans, burners with ignitors and accessibility for maintenance on burner nozzles (they get blocked), down-stream condensing boilers to heat water, sound suppression for burner noise, gas safety systems and well developed load control electronics. It is all of these 'extras' outside of the engine, and similar to a condensing boiler, that add to the cost. The LENR heat source should actually save a lot of money and complexity. The heater gets much simpler and cheaper and higher temperatures are possible due to high pressure hydrogen on both sides of heater surfaces that reduce stresses and allow use of improved high temperature materials as there is no steam or oxygen corrosion. Hydrogen is the ideal Stirling working fluid but has never been used for CHP home stirling because of slow leakage and need for replenishment - but LENR also needs it so it makes sense to use it in the Stirling engine too. This will also greatly increase efficiency and power compared to the Nitrogen or Helium working fluids currently used. Also there is no burner noise, and with the very cheap heat source it can run at constant load all the time simplifying control, while the water heater is also much more compact and simple. On 2 December 2011 10:25, Alain dit le Cycliste <[email protected]>wrote: > the world is small, > good luck. clearly such a device with NiH CA-LENR reactor, priced a bit > more realisticaly (WhisperGen is priced around 15KEur 8-o , but maybe > expensive gas impose overdesign), > can catch the market. > > > 2011/12/2 Robert Lynn <[email protected]> > >> My dad and the kid next door (when doing his PhD) were the two founders >> of Whispertech/Whispergen. My father was only involved for a short time, >> but the kid next door still runs it and he is very aware of what is >> happening. > > >
