Improved OSC Amtec generator design to meet goals of JPL's candidate Europa Orbiter mission

Conference · Wed Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998

OSTI ID:20000350

Schock, A; Noravian, H; Or, C; Kumar, V

The preceding paper (Paper IECEC.98.244) described OSC's initial designs of AMTEC (Alkali Metal Thermal-to-Electrical Conversion) power systems, consisting of one or two generators, each with 2, 3, or 4 General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) modules and with 16 refractory AMTEC cells containing 5 Beta Alumina Solid Electrolyte (BASE) tubes; and presented the effect of heat input and voltage output on the generator's BOM evaporator and clad temperatures and on its EOM system efficiency and power output. Comparison of the computed results with JPL's goals for the Europa Orbiter mission showed that all of the initial 16-cell design options yielded either excessive evaporator and clad temperatures or insufficient EOM power to satisfy the JPL-specified mission goals. The present paper describes modified OSC generator designs with different numbers of AMTEC cells, cell diameters, cell lengths, cell materials, BASE tube lengths, and number of tubes per cell. These efforts succeeded in identifying generator designs with only half the number of AMTEC cells which -- for the same assumptions -- can produce EOM power outputs substantially in excess of JPL's goals for NASA's Europa Orbiter mission while operating well below the prescribed BOM limits on evaporator and clad temperature; and revealed that lowering the emissivity of the generator's housing to raise the cells' condenser temperatures can achieve substantial additional performance improvement. Finally, the paper culminates in programmatic recommendations.

• Research Organization: Orbital Sciences Corp., Germantown, MD (US)
• OSTI ID: 20000350
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES
30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION
DESIGN
NESDPS Office of Nuclear Energy Space and Defense Power Systems
PERFORMANCE
RADIOISOTOPE HEAT SOURCES
RECOMMENDATIONS
SPACECRAFT POWER SUPPLIES
THERMOELECTRIC GENERATORS
THERMOELECTRIC MATERIALS