Combustion heated cold sealed TEC
- State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation, Obninsk (Russian Federation). Inst. of Physics and Power
- Energy Conversion Systems B.V., Eindhoven (Netherlands)
The development of a thermionic domestic boiler system using natural gas, which as performed under an ECS-project in 1992 to 1994 by a Russian-Dutch team of researchers, will be continued again. Thanks to financial support on the part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), the major effort in 1997 to 1999 will be focused on the development, manufacture and testing of an improved, easier to fabricate, more repairable and less expensive combustion heated TEC with a longer life-time. The achievement of the aim of this project will make it possible to expand the field of the terrestrial thermionics application and to embark on the commercialization stage. This report discusses the concept of the combustion heated Cold Seal TEC. A Cold Seal TEC will be developed and tested, in which the rubber O-ring seal will electrically insulate the hot shell from the collector heat pipe. The Cold Seal TEC will use a noble gas + cesium as the working medium (the idea of such a TEC was first proposed in 1973 by Professor Musa from Romania). In its cold state, the cesium will short circuit the emitter and the collector. During operation, the interelectrode space will be filled with cesium vapor. The upper part of a Cold Seal TEC will be filled with a noble gas. This noble gas will prevent the O-ring seal from being attacked by the cesium. The TEC output characteristics will be considerably improved by using electrode materials that were developed earlier in the course of an ECS-project for the development of low temperature TEC electrodes.
- OSTI ID:
- 347696
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970701-; TRN: IM9923%%233
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 32. intersociety energy conversion engineering conference, Honolulu, HI (United States), 27 Jul - 2 Aug 1997; Other Information: PBD: [1997]; Related Information: Is Part Of Proceedings of the thirty-second intersociety energy conversion engineering conference. Volume 4: Post deadline papers and author index; PB: 153 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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