Towards a portable mesoscale thermophotovoltaic generator
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Chan_2018_J._Phys.__Conf._Ser._1052_012041.pdf
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Author(s)
Chan, Walker R.
Stelmakh, Veronika
Karnani, Sunny
Waits, Christopher M.
Soljacic, Marin
Joannopoulos, John
Celanovic, Ivan
Date Issued
July 2018
Journal
Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Chan, Walker R. et al. “Towards a Portable Mesoscale Thermophotovoltaic Generator.” Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1052 (July 2018): 012041 © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Thermophotovoltaics (TPV) is the conversion of fuel to electricity with heat and light as intermediaries, and is a promising source of high energy density power at the mesoscale. This work describes our transition from our bench-top experiments to a fully-integrated portable generator. Specifically, we redesigned the microcombustor for propane-air combustion from the previous propane-oxygen design. Next, we validated vacuum package of the microcombustor, necessary to preserve the photonic crystal, in a 50+ day experiment in which there was no degradation of vacuum level. Finally, we vacuum packaged a microcombustor with integrated photonic crystals in a housing with two infrared-transparent windows to transmit the thermal radiation to external PV cells. Although considerable challenges remain, this work demonstrates the feasibility of a mesoscale TPV system.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1052/1/012041
