Talk:Thermophotovoltaic energy conversion

Hydrogen fire emitter UV photocells
Burning hydrogen produce UV light.What is efficiency of UV light photocells? Would it be greater than for infrared light? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.58.84.243 (talk) 15:24, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Typo found under Commercial Applications "This proposed furnace has not be developed because there is comparatively a very small market for off-grid power generation..."

changed to: "This proposed furnace has not been developed because there is comparatively a very small market for off-grid power generation..."--Netsight (talk) 12:30, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Is this truly an accurate name for this article?
A thermovoltaic develops voltage across a gradient, examples are some ceramic materials and Tourmaline. Another term used is Thermoelectric.

Thermoelectric diodes (typically Bismuth Telluride), operated with reverse bias current, will transfer heat across the junction, and are used in portable refrigerators and CPU cooling.

A photovoltaic generates electrical current on absorbing a photon, the photon energy may be in the 1.0 - .7 eV range of visual light or .5 -.3 eV of infrared light generated by hot objects.

Thermophotovoltaic ONLY fits the solar cells used in some mirrored solar arrays using high efficiency materials that generate current from photons when heated to well above Earth ambient temperatures. because they use heat AND light to generate electricity.

"Thermoelectric radioisotope generators" is illiterate. Nuclear reactors generate radioisotopes. What is meant is "Electricity generation by Heat caused by Radioactive Decay". As most electronic materials are DAMAGED by radiation, there should be some reference to this fact and its impact on these devices.

Shjacks45 (talk) 19:51, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Although this comment is 10 years old, I will point out that it is completely off base. "Thermophotovoltaic" (TPV) is widely used to refer to non-solar versions of this technology and in fact it's far more common to see non-solar TPV. I used to work in the field, but this is also easily confirmed from the references and any casual consultation of the literature. 70.181.67.17 (talk) 04:49, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

No reference to other mature technologies
1. I was looking at this with an eye towards improving thermal powerplants. Most coal fueled (and natural gas fueled) and nuclear electical generation plants have boilers that ared run at 650-750 degrees making for low thermodynamic efficiency. It would be desirable to extract more energy from the exhaust plume (thermal) and use of infra red photovoltaics.

2. Infrared photodiodes (pyroelectrics) used for Infrared detector (Infrared spectroscopy used in Chemistry Labs use) like Lithium Tantalate.

3. Thermoluminescence, e.g. Thorium Oxide, converts heat to visible light.

Shjacks45 (talk) 06:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to split out Indium gallium arsenide antimonide
I added the split-section to highlight that this is where InGaAsSb etc redirect. We don't need to split it out until we want to add material unrelated to TPV I guess. - Rod57 (talk) 02:21, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Wien's Law
It is stated that the low efficiency is due to Wien's Law, but the article on Wien's Law states the opposite (search for: "strong version" of Wien's displacement law). --Rainald62 (talk) 11:21, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Possible new efficiencies reached in 2022-2023
This topic is outside my area of expertise, so I will not edit the article myself. An informal article describes technology improvements in 2023 and cites what is apparently a formal research publication:

https://newatlas.com/energy/antora-carbon-heat-battery/

The formal research cited, as background, is:

https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(22)00483-4.pdf

The measured efficiency appears to be 38.8%. VallejoHistory (talk) 18:49, 29 August 2023 (UTC)