Simulation study of Ferricyanide/Ferrocyanide concentric annulus thermocell with different electrode spacing and cell direction

Direct measurement of the genuine efficiency of thermogalvanic heat-to-electricity conversion in thermocells

“…4). Employing one electrode physically higher than the other (hot-over-cold and cold-over-hot arrangements) can have a very significant impact due to gravity effects upon convection, and this has been reported previously for thermogalvanic cells, 20,21,24,42,49–51 with the former arrangement resulting in stagnation and a suppression of thermogalvanic current, while the latter can result in significant gravity-driven convective transfer of thermal energy. 21,24 The effect of this upon the estimated efficiency can be seen in Table 3.…”

“…It has been previously reported that the power density of a thermogalvanic cell drops significantly with increasing inter-electrode separation, but power conversion efficiency will increase. 27,40,42 Given this expected relationship, we set out to measure efficiency over 5 different electrode separations, all at an applied Δ T = 20 K. The results are summarised in Table 2 (full experimental results for cells without the heat flux sensor are in Table S1,† and with the heat flux sensor in Table S2†); key results are visualised in Fig. 5.…”

Diffusion and Current Generation in Porous Electrodes for Thermo-electrochemical Cells

“…This cell orientation homogenizes the electrolyte with convective transport driven by the density gradient of the electrolyte. 7,24 A temperature coefficient of redox potential (α) 25−27 relates the output voltage that can be obtained from a cell to the temperature difference applied to the electrodes in the cell, which can be expressed as follows…”

“…To minimize the concentration gradients of the products and reactants between the electrolyte and electrodes, the TEC presented here has horizontal parallel electrodes with the cold electrode placed above the hot electrode. This cell orientation homogenizes the electrolyte with convective transport driven by the density gradient of the electrolyte. , …”

Experimental investigation of a U-tube thermocell under various Fe(CN)63−/4− concentration

“…Thermo-galvanic cell, also named as thermocell, has a unique advantage among all electrochemical techniques. It is similar to a conventional thermoelectric technique and has the features of high compactness, simple construction with no moving components, and the capability of consecutive operation under temperature difference [23]. Differently, thermocell has a larger Seebeck coefficient (~1 mV/K), which means a higher voltage is acquired [24].…”