For those that don’t know what one is.

The Stirling engine never burns any fuel and is a thoroughly clean technology.

Now you too can own one.

Here is an awesome video clip to really demonstrate how cool this engine is and how efficient. Check it out running on the heat waste from a computer monitor.

Wikipedia: The Stirling engine, also known as the hot air engine, is a heat engine of the external combustion piston engine type. Its invention is credited to the Scottish clergyman Rev. Robert Stirling in 1816 who made significant improvements to earlier designs and took out the first patent. He was later assisted in its development by his engineer brother James Stirling.

The Stirling engine works by the repeated heating and cooling of a sealed amount of working gas. When the gas is heated, because it is in a sealed chamber, the pressure rises and this then acts on the power piston to produce a power stroke. When the gas is cooled the pressure drops and this means that less work needs to be done by the piston to recompress the gas on the return stroke, giving a net gain in power available on the shaft. The working gas flows cyclically between the hot and cold heat exchangers.

The working gas is sealed within the piston cylinders, so there is no exhaust gas, (other than that incidental to heat production if combustion is used as the heat source). No valves are required, unlike other types of piston engines.

CNET: Start-up sees new dawn for old solar tech

[Stirling Energy Systems] Phoenix-based start-up [has] raised $20 million to parlay a quirky, early-19th-century engine design repeatedly discarded as antiquated, most recently by aerospace company McDonnell Douglas and utility giant Southern California Edison, into a multibillion-dollar solar energy company.

[They] might be on to something, ... with the help of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories and Boeing.