Effect of design variations on AMTEC cell efficiency, and ofoperating parameters on performance of OSC cell design

摘要

A companion paper presented by the A. Schock et al. (see ibid.,p.1156-64, 1997) described an OSC-derived methodology for the coupledthermal, fluid flow, and electrical analyses of AMTEC cells withmultiple Beta Alumina Solid Electrolyte (BASE) tubes, and illustratedits application to a specific cell design. This paper describesparametric results obtained by applying the same procedure to 39variations of that cell design to determine the effect of 24 individualdesign variables on cell performance. For each of the 24 designvariables, OSC performed detailed analyses of two designs that wereidentical except for that variable. This served to isolate the effect ofthat variable on the cell's power, efficiency, and criticaltemperatures. The paper presents the results of those analyses, andexplains the reasons for the design decisions made by OSC. Subsequently,it describes the results of parametric analyses to determine the effectof temperature margin, input thermal power, and output voltage on thecell's critical temperatures and performance