Hey everyone, I was wondering if it would be feasible to run a small diesel engine with the heat from a gasifier. My idea is to connect it as close to the gasifier as possible, so that it concentrates the heat through compression, at which point it injects water into the cylinder instead of fuel. The most I’ve been able to find on this, is that a temperature of 800 degrees Fahrenheit can compress to around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit at a 20-1 compression ratio. Was wanting to try this out with my engine before mentioning this, but it was stolen yesterday.
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I would suggest you make a simple Stirling engine. Mudman here makes things out of old food cans. But you can learn the concept this way and then make something you can actually use.
Rindert
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Have you seen the nitinol heat engines? Apparently people are looking at the substance as a solid state heat pump. Nitinol is a superelastic nickel titanium alloy, that aborbs and releases heat as it changes it’s martinistic states. It made the news because the Army wants to use it for AC for military vehicles because it is solid state and non-flammable. It works in a low temperature differential range.
This is seemingly a really good DIY type of video on the subject where he actually builds something to create mechanical energy. I know there are other designs, which I will look at later.
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I like nitinol, shape memory alloy. I end up thinking it should make a very good low cost replacement for various actuators including solenoids. I would imagine a throttle control. I made a little video. You can get a short piece to play with for ~$2 at SparkFun
Rindert
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Thank you. That actually answered about 5 questions I had and saved me about 8 hours of searching for the answers to those questions. 
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