Heat to electricity conversion systems for moon exploration scenarios: A review of space and ground technologies

摘要

Sustained automatic and human exploration of the Solar System is the main and most challenging objective for mankind's next steps in space. Organic strategies based on increasing international cooperation foresee human crewed outposts on the Moon and on Mars by 2030 [1-4]. This challenging goal requires a significant effort in identifying key enabling technologies in different sectors, such as: propulsion, structures, in-situ resource utilization, logistics, and energy. Considering the latter field, energy supply, the conversion of heat into electricity has considerable heritage for space applications. In fact, such systems have been utilized since the 1950s to be directly employed in space mission scenarios. On the other hand, since the 1990s and 2000s a renewed interest in energy efficient systems (e.g. waste heat recovery, solar thermal systems, and advanced thermal cycles) is being pursued for ground applications. The work presented herein aims at reviewing all the Heat to Electricity Conversion systems developed for space applications, as well as analyzing recent developments for ground applications. Conversion systems performances are evaluated and compared considering power output, specific power, hot and cold side temperature, efficiency, technology readiness level, reliability, system complexity, and cost.In the last part of the present work, a matching between conversion systems and identified power requirements for different mission scenarios on the Moon is performed.