Unit-4

THERMO-ELECTRICAL AND THERMIONIC CONVERSIONS

THERMO-ELECTRICAL CONVERSIONS

4.1 INTRODUCTION

What is thermoelectric and thermionic conversion?

Thermoelectric and thermionic conversions are both systems that convert heat into electricity
without moving parts:
 Thermoelectric conversion
Based on the Seebeck, Peltier, and Thomson effects, thermoelectric systems have
applications in waste heat recovery and remote areas. However, they have low thermal
efficiency.
 Thermionic energy conversion (TEC)
Uses thermionic emission, which is the process of spontaneously ejecting electrons from a
hot surface. The electrons are then collected by a colder surface, called the anode. TECs
have applications in space, concentrated solar energy conversion, nuclear sectors, and
more. However, they have yet to be consistently realized in a practical manner for large-
scale deployment.

Why should we use thermoelectric and thermionic conversion?

They have several advantages, including:

 Silent operation: They don't have moving parts, so they operate silently.
 Low maintenance: They require little maintenance.
 Compact size: They are compact.
 Scalability: They can be scaled up and down.
 Environmentally friendly: They don't contain chemical products and can use waste heat as
an energy source.
Here are some other advantages of thermoelectric and thermionic conversion systems:

 Potential applications: They can be used in remote areas and for waste heat recovery.
 Reliable: Thermoelectric energy conversion is a reliable way to generate electricity from
thermal energy or solar heat.
However, thermoelectric conversion has low thermal efficiency. Thermionic converters can
also have limited efficiency due to space charge buildup between the electrodes.

Where we use the thermoelectric and thermionic conversion?

Thermoelectric and thermionic energy conversions are used in a variety of applications,

including:

 Power plants and factories: Thermoelectric generators can convert waste heat into
electricity.
 Automobiles: Automotive thermoelectric generators (ATGs) can increase fuel efficiency.
 Space: Thermionic energy conversion (TEC) is used in space nuclear power supply systems.
 Concentrated solar energy: TEC is used for concentrating solar power.
 Metallurgical processes: TEC is used in metallurgical processes.
 Electronics and communications: Thermionic emission is used as a source of electrons in
conventional electron tubes, such as television picture tubes.
TEC uses thermionic emission, which is the process of electrons being ejected from a hot
surface and collected by a colder surface.
Thermoelectric conversion is a general term of the phenomena in which heat is generated from
electricity, or vice versa, due to the characteristics of certain substances. The substances
(conductors or semiconductors) that cause such phenomena are called thermoelectric conversion
materials.

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.
Fig. 4.1(a)Working Diagram of Thermoelectric Power Generator
Fig. 4.1 (b) Working Diagram of Thermoelectric Power Generator
Fig. 4.1 (c) Working Diagram of Thermoelectric Power Generator
Fig. 4.1 (d)Working Diagram of Thermoelectric Power Generator
Thermo-electrical and thermionic Conversions
Fig. 4.2 Working Diagram of Thermionic Power Generator
Fig. 4.3 Diagram for Seeback Effect

Fig. 4.4 Diagram for Peltier Effect

WIND ENERGY

4.4INTRODUCTION

What is wind energy?

Wind energy is a renewable energy source that uses wind to generate electricity:

 How it works
Wind turbines use blades to collect wind's kinetic energy, which causes the blades to
turn. The blades are connected to a drive shaft that turns an electric generator, producing
electricity.
 Benefits
Wind energy is clean, efficient, and sustainable:
 Clean: Wind turbines don't produce greenhouse gas emissions.
 Efficient: Wind turbines are becoming more efficient.
 Sustainable: Wind energy is inexhaustible and has a low water-consumption footprint.
Where it's used
The windiest parts of most countries are offshore, so wind farms are often built out at
sea. Taller towers can capture more energy and generate more electricity because wind
speed increases with height
.
Why should we use wind energy?

Wind energy is a clean, renewable energy source with many benefits, including:

 Low carbon emissions

Wind energy doesn't release carbon emissions, and can help reduce the amount of
electricity generated from fossil fuels.
  Low environmental impact
Wind turbines don't pollute the air or water, and they don't require water for cooling.
 Economic benefits
Wind energy can help reduce utility bills, and communities can receive tax credits and
financial incentives.
 Job creation
Wind energy can create jobs.
 Land use
Wind turbines can be built on open land, mountain ridges, or offshore, and they take up
minimal space. Farmers and ranchers can lease their land to wind farms and continue to
use it to grow crops or raise livestock.
 End-of-life
Wind plants can be almost completely dismantled and recycled, and the land can be
returned to its original state

Where we use wind energy?

Wind energy can be used in many ways, including:

 Electricity generation: Wind turbines convert wind's kinetic energy into mechanical
energy, which is then converted into electricity. Wind turbines can be installed on land or
at sea, and can be owned and operated by utility companies.
 Water pumping: Wind pumps can be used to extract water from the ground for drinking
water or irrigation. A single wind pump can pump up to 600 liters per hour, which is
enough to meet the needs of a small farm.
 Renewable hydrogen production: Wind energy can be used to produce the electrical
current needed to produce renewable hydrogen, which can be used to make synthetic
fuels.
 Sports: Wind energy is used in sports like windsurfing, kite boarding, and land surfing.
 Sailing: Wind energy has been used for sailing for a long time.
 Milling grain: Windmills have been used to mill grain for a long time.

Wind energy is clean, inexhaustible, and cheap, and it has a low impact on the
environment.
Wind power or wind energy is the use of wind to provide mechanical power through wind
turbines to turn electric generators for electrical power. Wind power is a
popular sustainable, renewable energy source that has a much smaller impact on the
environment compared to burning fossil fuels.

4.4.2 Wind power and its sourcesSources

Wind turbines, like windmills, are mounted on a tower to capture the most energy. At 100 feet
(30 meters) or more aboveground, they can take advantage of the faster and less turbulent wind.
Turbines catch the wind's energy with their propeller-like blades. Usually, two or three blades
are mounted on a shaft to form a rotor.

A blade acts much like an airplane wing. When the wind blows, a pocket of low-pressure air
forms on the downwind side of the blade. The low-pressure air pocket then pulls the blade
toward it, causing the rotor to turn. This is called lift. The force of the lift is actually much
stronger than the wind's force against the front side of the blade, which is called drag. The
combination of lift and drag causes the rotor to spin like a propeller, and the turning shaft spins a
generator to make electricity.

4.5 Site selection

Four types of site are considered suitable. These are :

 Plane land sites

 Hill tops sites

 Sea- shore sites

 Off-shore shallow water sites.

Although wind power is a never ending green resource, assessment of environmental risks and
impacts- which comprise the backbone of environmental policy- in the context of specific
projects or sites often are necessary to explicate and weigh the environmental trade-offs that are
involved. In the case of wind farms, a number of turbines (ranging from about 250 kW to 750
kW) are connected together to generate large amounts of power. Apart from the constraints
resulting from the number of turbines, any site selection should think over the technical,
economic, social, environmental and political aspects.

1. Technical Considerations: Many technical factors affect the decision making on site
selection including wind speed, land topography and geology, grid structure and distance
and turbine size. These technical factors must be understood in order to give pair-wise
scores to sub-factors.

2. Wind Speed: The viability of wind power in a given site depends on having sufficient wind speed
available at the height at which the turbine is to be installed. Any choice of wind turbine design must
be based on the average wind velocity at the selected wind turbine construction site.

3. Land topography and geology: Wind farms typically need large lands. Topography and prevailing
wind conditions determine turbine placement and spacing within a wind farm. In flat areas where
there is nothing to interfere with wind flow, at least 2600-6000 m2/MW may be required. Wind
turbines are usually sited on farms that have slope smaller than 10-20%.

4. Grid structure and distance: The connection of wind turbines to an electricity grid can potentially
affect reliability of supply and power quality, due to the unpredictable fluctuations in wind power
output.

5. Turbine size: Required height for the installation of turbine above ground is one of the important
factors that affect the annual energy generation. [10] Turbine size is related with the energy output,
because the bigger the turbine size is, the more wind it is exposed to.

4.6 Criterion

 Wind turbine selection based on a single criterion, energy production capacity, and
particle swarm optimization algorithm was used as the underlying optimization
algorithm.

 Algorithmic and computational complexities associated with particle swarm

optimization, along with the accuracy of the decision process due to a single criterion.
 Optimization of cost of energy as the turbine selection criterion, while assuming different
turbine types.

 One optimization criterion, namely, minimum cost of energy was considered which was
modeled as function of expected annual energy output, capacity factor, and cost of
energy.

 In order to develop the two-level fuzzy logic model for the underlying problem, the upper
and lower limits for each decision criteria were found using the data collected for the
concerned site. Using these bounds and the data from the sites, fuzzy membership values
for each criterion are computed and aggregated in form of an overall decision function
according to the proposed approach.

 MCDM is a technique used in situations requiring decisions while considering multiple

and “conflicting” decision criteria. Conflicting criteria are those criteria which negatively
impact each other, i.e., improving the quality of one criterion degrades the quality of
other(s).

4.7 Momentum theory

Momentum theory or disk actuator theory is a theory describing a mathematical model of an

ideal actuator disk, such as a propeller or helicopter rotor, by W.J.M. Rankine (1865), Alfred
George Greenhill (1888) and Robert Edmund Froude (1889).

The rotor is modeled as an infinitely thin disc, inducing a constant velocity along the axis of
rotation. The basic state of a helicopter is hovering. This disc creates a flow around the rotor.
Under certain mathematical premises of the fluid, there can be extracted a mathematical
connection between power, radius of the rotor, torque and induced velocity. Friction is not
included.

For a stationary open rotor with no outer duct, such as a helicopter in hover, the power
required to produce a given thrust is:
 where:

 T is the thrust

 is the density of air (or other medium)

 A is the area of the rotor disc

 P is power

A device which converts the translational energy of the fluid into rotational energy of the
axis or vice versa is called a Rankine disk actuator. The real life implementations of such
devices are e.g. marine and aviation propellers, windmills, helicopter rotors, centrifugal
pumps, wind turbines, turbochargers and chemical agitators.

4.8 Classification of rotors

Starting from classical horizontal axis rotors (old windmills), a lot of types of wind rotors
were developed as time went on, some of them were excellent. Indeed the first windmills
developed in Mesopotamia were built with vertical axis, mounting, radially, some vertical
flags. After some centuries and thanks to the deep experience gained, man optimized the
rotor reaching excellent results such as the Dutch and Greek windmills.

Wind rotors can be divided into three main groups:

- System with horizontal axis

- System with vertical axis
- Hybrid

SYSTEM WITH HORIZONTAL AXIS

In this case the axis is perpendicular to the wind direction and the blades move to the
direction of the air flux. The SAVONIUS rotor (from the name of the Finlander J. Savonius
who invented it in 1929) is the simplest type. It can be built opposing two half cylinders
hinged on the axis of the rotor itself. In this type of rotor a system of orientation of the blades
is not necessary, however not all the surface is exposed to the wind. In fact, while a blade
 collects the air flux and it is pushed, the other one turns to the opposite side, reducing the
performance.

The main characteristics of this wind rotor are the following ones:

• front area totally used

• high speed of rotation
• high coefficient of lift
• high power obtainable

Fig. 4.5 Wind Rotor

SYSTEM WITH VERTICAL AXIS

In this case the axis is perpendicular to the wind direction and the blades move to the direction of
the air flux. The SAVONIUS rotor (from the name of the Finlander J. Savonius who invented it
in 1929) is the simplest type. It can be built opposing two half cylinders hinged on the axis of the
rotor itself. In this type of rotor a system of orientation of the blades is not necessary, however
not all the surface is exposed to the wind. In fact, while a blade collects the air flux and it is
pushed, the other one turns to the opposite side, reducing the performance .
The main characteristics of this wind rotor are the following ones:

a. low speed of rotation b. high mechanical torque c. modest performance

 Fig. 4.6 SAVONIUS rotor

HYBRID SYSTEMS
They are the youngest and they combine the advantageous characteristics of both the systems
with horizontal and vertical axis. In general they are with vertical axis with propellers or
blades derived from the previous ones. Here are some examples: the Darrieous rotor, the
Cycloturbine, the Ropatec rotor, the rotor with delta flange (see the photo), ext.
The main characteristics of this wind rotor are the following ones:

a. easiness of construction b. high speed of rotation c. no orientation system

d. power coefficients close to the theoretical value

Fig 4.7 Hybrid Wind Rotor System

4.9 Concentrations and augments

 Principle of operation that can be applied to a large variety of new wind turbines designs.
 As a function of the choices in design, this new generation of a wind turbine apparatus
improves or remedies each of the above-mentioned problems associated with traditional
wind turbines
 The basic concept is the funneling of wind in a conduit to concentering it.
  The flux of compressed air is thereby directed to interact with the most efficient surface
of a wind turbine propeller blade.
 The turbine can thus be designed with the goal of benefiting from the weakest winds or,
contrarily, benefiting from the strongest winds.
 Since the wind turbine is housed within the apparatus, the resulting noise caused by
aerodynamic motions can be almost completely attenuated.
 Furthermore, an enclosed wind turbine conceals the visible movement of the propellers
and protects flying wildlife
 Aerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air,
particularly when it interacts with a solid object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid
dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is
often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with the difference being that gas dynamics
applies to all gases.
Augmentation

 Diffuser Augmented Wind Turbines (DAWTs) are one of many concepts to have been
proposed to reduce the cost of renewable energy. As the most commercially viable, they
have been the focus of numerous theoretical, computational, and experimental
investigations.
 Although intimated in these studies to be able to augment the power output of a wind
turbine, the extent of this power increase, or augmentation, the factors influencing
DAWT performance, the optimal geometric form and their economical benefit remained
unanswered.
 To translate the available augmentation into shaft power a modified blade element
method has been developed using an empirically-derived axial velocity equation. The
resulting blade designs whose efficiencies reached 77%, twice those of Grumman,
highlight the accuracy of the modified blade element method in calculating the flow
conditions at the blade-plane of the multi-slotted DAWT.
 It was also noted that the rotor efficiencies remain below 'best practice' and therefore
offer the potential for further increases in shaft augmentation
4.10 Wind characteristics

Site-specific wind characteristics pertinent to wind turbines include:

 Mean wind speed: Only interesting as a headline figure, but does not tell how often high
wind speeds occur.
 Wind speed distribution : diurnal, seasonal, annual patterns.
 Turbulence: short-term fluctuations.
  Long-term fluctuations.
Mean Wind Speed and Energy Distribution: The mean wind speed can be defined as
time-averaged wind speed, averaged over a specified time interval. The mean wind speed
varies with elevation above mean sea level and the averaging time interval; a standard
reference elevation is 10 m and a standard time interval is 1 h. In practice this implies that we
should carefully define our energy demands

 Minimum energy production (water/electricity) per week/month/year. This value,

together with the average wind speed, will give the minimum rotor size (and a first
estimate of cost price).
 Allowance of no energy production during a certain period (giving an impression about
water storage tanks or batteries).
 Time of the year that the system is really producing energy.
In order to decide whether or not a wind energy system will satisfy our energy needs, we
have to know more about the prevailing wind speeds at the future wind turbine site.

4.11 Performance of Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS)

The complete wind energy conversion systems (WECS), which converts the energy
present in the moving air (wind) to electric energy. The wind passing through the blades
of the wind turbine generates a force that turns the turbine shaft. The rotational shaft turns
the rotor of an electric generator, which converts mechanical power into electric power.
The major components of a typical wind energy conversion system include the wind
turbine, generator, interconnection apparatus and control systems. The power developed
by the wind turbine mainly depends on the wind speed, swept area of the turbine blade,
density of the air, rotational speed of the turbine and the type of connected electric
machine.

As shown in figure 1, there are primarily two ways to control the WECS. The first is the
Aerodynamic power control at either the Wind Turbine blade or nacelle, and the second
is the electric power control at an interconnected apparatus, e.g., the power electronics
converters. The flexibility achieved by these two control options facilitates extracting
maximum power from the wind during low wind speeds and reducing the mechanical
stress on the wind turbine during high wind speeds.
Fig. 4.8 (a) Working Diagram of Wind Power Generation System

Fig. 4.8 (b) Working Diagram of Wind Power Generation System

4.12 Limitations of Wind Energy Conversion System

 The wind is inconsistent

 Wind turbines involve high upfront capital investment

 Wind turbines have a visual impact

  May reduce the local bird population

 Wind turbines are prone to noise disturbances

 Installation can take up a significant portion of land

 Wind turbines can be a safety hazard

 Wind turbines are suited to a particular region

Important questions of Unit 4 (Short Answer, Medium Answer and Long

Answer Type)

[Link] Seebeck Effect and Peltier Effect. (AKTU2021)

2. Definebrieflyaboutcutinspeedandtipspeedratio. (AKTU2022)

3. What is the basic difference between thermoelectric and thermionic electric

conversion systems? Also, explain the working of thermoelectric generators?
(AKTU2021)
4. Using Betz model of a wind turbine, derive the expression for power extracted
from wind. Under what condition does the maximum theoretical power can be
extracted from the wind turbine? (AKTU2021)

5. State Thermo-electrical conversions towards field. Discuss in detail about

performance and limitations of thermoelectric power generator. (AKTU2022)