Towards a portable mesoscale thermophotovoltaic generator

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.