We've brought the Stirling engine into the 21st century with advanced engineering and fabrication technology

Stirling Engine Technology

Our Stirling engines feature our innovative and patented TrueCycle technology, developed at Ontario Tech University. This makes our engines capable of following the actual Stirling cycle, which previous “Stirling engines” were not able to do, thus achieving higher efficiency and finally enabling our Stirling engines to live up to their potential as the best way to convert heat into power.

We can convert heat into power at high efficiency because:

1. Controlled Piston Motion: A cam groove enables controlled and programmable piston motion to optimize performance. 

2. Enhanced Regenerator Design: Our regenerator design maximizes energy storage between cycles while minimizing space.

Non-sinusoidal motion

To follow the Stirling cycle, an engine must be capable of non-sinusoidal motion. Traditional engines use a crank shaft, which produces sinusoidal motion. The blue shaded area in this plot shows the work lost during each rotation of the engine when sinusoidal motion is used. We patented our TrueCycle method of accomplishing non-sinusoidal motion in our Stirling engines, which produces much higher efficiencies.

This is made possible by advances in high precision manufacturing, materials, and modelling capabilities, that we can now use to enable Stirling engines to live up to their potential.

Sub-regenerators

In a Stirling engine, the regenerator stores the heat between the hot and cold chambers, and is crucial for achieving high efficiencies. Single regenerators can only achieve 50% effectiveness, which diminishes the efficiency of an engine. We have developed regenerators composed of numerous sub-regenerators in a new design that can achieve over 95% effectiveness and increase the overall efficiency of our Stirling engines.

Our regenerator technology is made possible by advances in metal additive manufacturing (3D printing), and modern modelling and optimization tools.