Progress toward high power output in thermionic energy converters

MF Campbell, TJ Celenza, F Schmitt… - Advanced …, 2021 - Wiley Online Library
Thermionic energy converters are solid‐state heat engines that have the potential to
produce electricity with efficiencies of over 30% and area‐specific power densities of 100 …

Thermionic energy conversion for concentrating solar power

G Xiao, G Zheng, M Qiu, Q Li, D Li, M Ni - Applied Energy, 2017 - Elsevier
Concentrating solar power (CSP) is a mainstream of solar energy utilization, and thermionic
emission is a potential way to convert concentrated solar radiation into power with a …

Review on thermionic energy converters

KAA Khalid, TJ Leong… - IEEE transactions on …, 2016 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
Thermionic energy converter (TEC) is a heat engine that generates electricity directly using
heat as its source of energy and electron as its working fluid. Despite having a huge …

[HTML][HTML] Thermionic energy conversion in the twenty-first century: advances and opportunities for space and terrestrial applications

DB Go, JR Haase, J George, J Mannhart… - Frontiers in …, 2017 - frontiersin.org
Thermionic energy conversion (TEC) is the direct conversion of heat into electricity by the
mechanism of thermionic emission, the spontaneous ejection of hot electrons from a surface …

Trade-off between the near-field heat transfer and the space charge effect in graphene-anode thermionic energy converters

T Liang, J Chen, X Chen, S Su, J Chen - Energy, 2022 - Elsevier
The high work function of electrode materials inhibits the improvement of the performance of
thermionic energy converters. Space charge effect and near-field heat transfer are also …

Harvesting solar thermal energy with a micro-gap thermionic-thermoelectric hybrid energy converter: Model development, energy exchange analysis, and …

E Rahman, A Nojeh - Energy, 2020 - Elsevier
We present a comprehensive analysis of a dual, micro-gap thermionic-thermoelectric hybrid
energy converter by developing a detailed theoretical model of the system. The space …

Interplay between near-field radiative coupling and space-charge effects in a microgap thermionic energy converter under fixed heat input

E Rahman, A Nojeh - Physical Review Applied, 2020 - APS
We investigate the performance of a microgap vacuum thermionic energy converter by
considering loss mechanisms due to the space-charge effect and interelectrode radiative …

Micro-gap thermo-photo-thermionics: An alternative approach to harvesting thermo-photons and its comparison with thermophotovoltaics

E Rahman, A Nojeh - Applied Thermal Engineering, 2023 - Elsevier
This work investigates an alternative to thermophotovoltaics for harvesting thermal and
optical energy via photon coupling and thermionic energy conversion. In this device, a heat …

[HTML][HTML] Electron reflection in thermionic energy converters

IT Lim, SA Lambert, JL Vay, JW Schwede - Applied Physics Letters, 2018 - pubs.aip.org
We investigate the impact of electron reflection on space charge in thermionic energy
converters. Using the particle-in-cell code Warp3D, we simulate electron reflection and …

Computational model and optimisation of a vacuum diode thermionic generator for application in concentrating solar thermal power

AD Post, BV King, EH Kisi - Applied Thermal Engineering, 2017 - Elsevier
A complete model of a thermionic generator has been developed in order to optimise the
technology for application in the solar thermal generation of electricity. Steady state current …