Bay State Energy - Thermoelectric Microreactor Startup

Overview

Bay State energy was a startup created to provide a simple and reliable renewable energy source. Our design would use TRISO fuel as a high heat resistant energy source. This heat would be transferred through helium to different thermoelectric generator (TEG's). TEG's use a heat difference to produce electricity using a phenomena called the Seebeck effect. This company is in the early stages and currently trying to get funding for more research and better tools for simulation and fabrication. Currently, competitors micro-reactors show around a 1-1.5 MW continuous output which is what our company bases our estimates off of. This is enough energy to power hundreds of houses continuously for years.

I worked as the primary design engineer for BSE and conceptualized and drafted three models for the micro-reactor. The reactors components never changed but the design that some may have had initially was modified to fit the teams needs.

I also worked on simulation of the heat transfer and electrical output of a Thermo-Electric Module using mainly COMSOL, but also attempted to use GMESH (a meshing software) and MOOSE (another COMSOL software dealing with heat transfer).

My Contribution

Model Progression

The first model that I created was a basic model made specifically for determining what general components would be used, as well as what desired dimensions that our team was thinking of implementing.

You can see in this model, the core, the TEG's, a transfer system and a control panel for energy regulation and heat transfer.

This model was the second version of the model but this model was made to demonstrate purpose and concepts of operations without giving too much information out to the public at the time. This model was to be shown to others as a display as what the reactor would look like.

Later this model was removed due me finding its appearance to be an eyesore. I mean look at it.

This model, while not being the most in depth model, was what our team currently uses for the website page as a display and has the same purpose as the second model. This one was a major improvement in terms of aesthetic and pipe design while still giving the same ability for concept of operations.

Simulation

These two photos are simulation results of the electric and thermal aspect of a thermo-electric module.

Much time was spent trying to get MOOSE simulation software setup but ultimately we decided on using COMSOL due to the many issues we ran into during setup. (Windows incompatibility, mesh nodes not colliding).

This is only a test case for a 50 degree temperature difference along the edges of what would be the TEG module.

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