"In a Stirling engine, it's hotter on one side of the engine and colder on the other side." As gas inside the engine moves from one side to the other, it is heated or cooled. "Engines turn over because of a pressure difference," says Miller. The Stirling engine is not the same as the internal combustion engine in your car, but it is similar in some key ways. Stumpf is part of a team of grad students - which includes David Miller, '16 BSc(MechEng), and Jason Michaud, '16 BSc(MechEng) - working to adapt a traditional Stirling engine to harness energy at these less-than-100 C temperatures. It's difficult to harness such low temperatures to create electricity, but now a team is adapting a two-century-old engine design to help solve a modern challenge. "The problem is, here it's all below 100 degrees Celsius," he says. But it turns out that not all geothermal energy is equal. "Geophysicists tell us there's more geothermal energy under the ground than there is hydrocarbon energy in Alberta," says grad student Calynn Stumpf, '16 BSc(MechEng). The potential for geothermal energy surrounds us. The Players: Graduate students David Miller, '16 BSc(MechEng), Jason Michaud, '16 BSc(MechEng), and Calynn Stumpf, '16 BSc(MechEng), working under David Nobes, professor of mechanical engineering The Research: Adapt a traditional Stirling engine so that it can be powered by temperatures not much hotter than a cup of tea The Challenge: Is it possible to harness low-temperature geothermal energy?
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