https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?

R=20110012220 2018-08-13T05:03:28+00:00Z

Green Design

Thermoelectric Energy Conversion Technology for High-

Altitude Airships
Applications include surveillance for homeland security, and Earth observation for
weather monitoring.
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

The High Altitude Air- wise dumped away. In this

ship (HAA) has various ap- Concentrated Solar Energy fashion, the ATE devices
plication potential and mis- become more effective
sion scenarios that require than solar cells because the
onboard energy harvesting performance of solar cells
and power distribution sys- is monolithically tied to
tems. The power technol- band-gap energy structure,
ogy for HAA maneuverabil- SiGe Layer so that they only couple
ity and mission-oriented with certain spectral lines.
applications must come For nighttime, the
from its surroundings, e.g. power required must be
Output PbTe Layer
solar power. The energy augmented from the on-
Power
harvesting system consid- board fuel cells, battery,
ered for HAA is based on and a rectenna array that is
Bi2Te3 Layer
the advanced thermoelec- attached at the bottom sur-
tric (ATE) materials being Removed face of HAA. These systems
developed at NASA Langley Heat combined provide at least a
Research Center. The mate- megawatt level of power for
rials selected for ATE are sil- the intermittent operation.
icon germanium (SiGe) The ATE Energy Conversion Device consists of triple layers of p-n-junction arrays in Commercial applications
a tandem mode. The first layer is built from the array of SiGe, while the second and
and bismuth telluride third layers are built from PbTe and Bi2Te3, respectively, as regenerative cycles. Such include monitoring and
(Bi2Te3), in multiple layers. an arrangement allows effective energy harvesting from a heat source. controlling the ever-increas-
The layered structure of the ing complexities of aerial
advanced TE materials is specifically engi- Bi2Te3 as regenerative cycles. Such an and maritime transportation and telecom-
neered to provide maximum efficiency arrangement allows effective energy har- munication networks. Military applications
for the corresponding range of opera- vesting from a heat source. First, solar include close and persistent surveillance of
tional temperatures. For three layers of flux is concentrated and heats up the adversarial elements, possibly controlling
the advanced TE materials that operate at first layer, which is built with high-tem- enemy infiltrations through open air and
high, medium, and low temperatures, perature SiGe. The unused thermal en- sea and shooting down enemy missiles dur-
correspondingly in a tandem mode, the ergy from the first layer is subsequently ing their boosting phase.
cascaded efficiency is estimated to be used by the second layer, which is built This work was done by Sang H. Choi, James
greater than 60 percent. with mid-temperature PbTe. The third R. Elliott, Glen C. King, Yeonjoon Park, Jae-Woo
The first layer is built from the array layer of Bi2Te3 uses the unused energy Kim, and Sang-Hyon Chu of Langley Research
of SiGe, while the second and third lay- from the second layer to maximize the Center. Further information is contained in a
ers are respectively built from PbTe and conversion of the energy that is other- TSP (see page 1). LAR-17213-1

Combustor Computations for CO2-Neutral Aviation

This method can be used to determine synthetic and biological fuels and blends.
John H. Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio

Knowing the pure component Cp0 or
mixture Cp0 as computed by a flexible code
such as NIST-STRAPP or McBride-Gor-
don, one can, within reasonable accuracy,
determine the thermophysical properties
necessary to predict the combustion char-
acteristics when there are no tabulated or
computed data for those fluid mixtures
3or limited results for lower temperatures.
(Note: Cp0 is molar heat capacity at con-
stant pressure.) The method can be used
in the determination of synthetic and bio-
logical fuels and blends using the NIST
code to compute the Cp0 of the mixture.
In this work, the values of the heat ca-

NASA Tech Briefs, February 2011 25