German Scientists Invent World's Smallest Steam Engine!

The world when stretched between macro and micro can act very differently on different scales. When we talk of micro scale, very strange laws are experienced which control the processes and which are many times not even imagined in the macro world. Studying the micro laws has been an interest of the researchers as much as the astronomers are busy distinguishing the principles which operate the universe and those which dictate the life on earth-'The Newton's physics' as we can say. Interestingly, taking a step further in the discussion of micro and macro, German scientists have successfully achieved a significant size reduction in Stirling engine making it World's Smallest Steam Engine!

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A Stirling engine in the microworld: In a normal-sized engine, a gas expands and contracts at different temperature and thus moves a piston in a cylinder. Physicists in Stuttgart have created this work cycle with a tiny plastic bead that they trapped in the focus of a laser field. Image Credit: Fritz Hoeffel/ Art For Science

The steam engine which was invented around 200 years ago by Robert Stirling has been reduced to a few micrometers by a research group from University of Stuttgart and Stuttgart-based #-Link-Snipped-#. It took conscious efforts as the principles on which the team was working were altogether different in many cases although the basic process was same.

The breakthrough was achieved by changing few parts of the actual steam engine like the piston cylinder arrangement and the heating process which is seen in the normal Stirling engine. For example, the piston was replaced by a #-Link-Snipped-# which would vary in intensity and act like a piston on a micro scale. The macro version of the Stirling engine dictates that the gas filled cylinder is heated by a coal fired furnace. However the team of researchers demonstrated that the process with a plastic bead like cluster of gas molecules can also work. The properties of the bead made it float in the surrounding water. Efforts were done so that there is a constant exchange of the heat energy between the bead and water molecules around it.

It should be noted that the energy exchange between the gas and the water was only because of the constant motion of the water molecules. It also means that a minor change in the process may make the engine to stop working. Despite the fact that the power hence generated varies continuously, the max-planck and Stuttgart group found that the engine works at the same efficiency and the same scaled down power of the actual engine which we are using when we use Stirling's steam engine.

Smaller reactions or process occurring in many scientific functions may be powered by this engine in the coming future. The possibility that it is incorporated in a bigger system by arranging a cluster of such heat engine cannot be ruled out. However the feasibility of the aspect needs to be tested first for the power variation at full load in a macro scale engine is significant. The future aspects of smallest Steam engine as far as the research is definitely look positive.

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