The performance achieved is superior to traditional steam turbines. The heat engine is a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell, similar to a solar panel’s photovoltaic cells, that passively captures high-energy photons from a white-hot heat source and converts them into electricity.
The team’s design can generate electricity from a heat source at between 1,900°C and 2,400°C and can hopefully be incorporated into a grid-scale thermal battery.
The system would absorb excess energy from renewable sources such as the sun and store that energy in heavily insulated banks of hot graphite. When the energy is needed, such as on overcast days, TPV cells would convert the heat into electricity, and dispatch the energy to a power grid.
With the new TPV cell, the team has now successfully demonstrated the main parts of the system in separate, small-scale experiments.
They are working to integrate the parts to demonstrate a fully operational system with plans to scale it up...