Development of a solar receiver for a high-efficiency thermionic/thermoelectric conversion system

Solar energy is one of the most promising energy resources on Earth and in space, because it is clean and inexhaustible. Therefore, we have been developing a solar-powered high-efficiency thermionic/thermoelectric conversion system which combines a thermionic converter (TIC) with a thermoelectric converter (TEC) to use thermal energy efficiently and to achieve high efficiency conversion. The TIC emitter must uniformly heat up to 1800 K. The TIC emitter can be heated using thermal radiation from a solar receiver maintained at a high temperature by concentrated solar irradiation. A cylindrical cavity-type solar receiver constructed from graphite was designed and heated in a vacuum by using the solar concentrator at Tohoku University. The maximum temperature of the solar receiver enclosed by a molybdenum cup reached 1965 K, which was sufficiently high to heat it TIC emitter using thermal radiation from the receiver. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.