A TERM PAPER ON DIRECT ENERGY CONVERTING DEVICES AND SYSTEMS

Fossil fuels (coal, fuel oil and natural gas) still meet the major part of our energy demand and are getting fast depleted. Moreover, there are serious pollution hazards like greenhouse effect and global warming which occur due to fossil fuel burning. The use of nuclear power too has its own problems and nuclear fusion is yet to be realized in practice. We have thus been forced to look for non-conventional power generation systems so as to reduce fossil fuel consumption by increasing the conversion efficiency from fuel to electricity. A substantial fuel economy can be achieved by converting “heat” (internal energy) directly to electricity by eliminating the link process of producing mechanical energy through steam (Rankine cycle). The major direct energy converting devices discussed in this paper are: thermoelectric generators, fuel cells, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generator and thermionic converters. Photovoltaic system and thermionic coolers are also discussed. Their mechanism of operation, contributions to the grid energy usages and preferences to other energy producing systems are vividly covered in this paper.