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

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