Thermodynamic optimization of Stirling heat engine with methane gas using finite speed thermodynamic model

Abstract

With the daily rise in environmental issues due to the use of conventional fuels, researchers are motivated to use renewable energy sources. One of such waste heat and low‐temperature differential driven energy sources is the Stirling engine. The performance of the Stirling engine can be improved by finding out the optimum operating and geometrical parameters with suitable working gas and thermal model. Based on this motivation, the current work focuses on the multiobjective optimization of the Stirling engine using the finite speed thermodynamic model and methane gas as the working fluid. Considering output power and pressure drop as two objective functions, the system is optimized using 11 geometrical and thermal design parameters. The optimization results are obtained in the form of the Pareto frontier. A sensitivity assessment is carried out to observe the decision variables, which are having a more sensitive effect on the optimization objectives. Optimization results reveal that 99.83% change in power output and 78% change in total pressure drop can take place in the two‐dimensional optimization space. The optimal solution closest to the ideal solution has output power and pressure drop values as 12.31 kW and 22.76 kPa, respectively.