CONCEPTUAL DUAL THERMOELECTRIC SPACE RADIOISOTOPE POWER SYSTEM

摘要

The University of Leicester (UL) and the University of Dayton (UD) have carried out various performance tests on UL's recently developed bismuth-antimony-telluride and bismuth-selenium-telluride thermoelectric modules which operate with a hot side temperature of approximately 220°C. The current U.S. RPS (MMRTG) system employs lead telluride based thermoelectric materials which operate with a cold side temperature of ~200°C. Considering that the -200°C cold side temperature of the lead telluride thermoelectric is comparable to the hot side temperature of the bismuth telluride modules, recent experiments suggest the intriguing possibility of employing the two thermoelectric materials in a dual RPS (dRPS) with the bismuth telluride modules offering additional energy harvesting of the unutilized decay heat. A first-order preliminary feasibility study of a conceptual dRPS is discussed.