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Testing Facilities and Equipment
Experimental research being performed in the Thermal-hydraulics and Energy Conversion Laboratory (TECL) at the University of New Mexico’s Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies includes investigations of pool boiling and two-phase flow systems, thermosyphons and heat pipes, enhanced cooling of electronics, and performance tests of ThermoElectric (TE) unicouples, some of which continued for ~ 3700 hours. The TECL laboratory is equipped with a 200 kW DC power supply, two 1.0 kW DC power supplies, one 500 W DC power supply, three fully equipped data acquisition systems, each connected to a PC equipped with the most recent data analysis software (LabView), two chillers for a wide range of temperature control from –25 oC to 150 oC, and two vacuum test facilities.
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The vacuum test facilities are designed for testing high-temperature devices up to 1300 K under high vacuum (~ 10 -8 Torr), or in inert gas such as argon or helium at < 1 atm. These facilities are fully instrumented for either manual or automatic, real-time data collection of voltage, current and temperature measurements during testing. Thermoelectric performance tests have been performed in both facilities in high vacuum and in argon gas environment at pressures between 0.6 and 0.75 atm. Denki v2.0, a control and data acquisition software developed at UNM-ISNPS using the LABVIEW® platform, is capable of controlling heating, cooling and operation conditions of four different test devices simultaneously. The next version under development will be capable of simultaneously controlling up to 8 different devices under test in the four-bell jar vacuum facility. The software allows automatic control of the experiment to ensure preset operation and that safety margins are not exceeded. |
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 Denki can control tests in various ways. The heater power profile can be specified as a function of time, or a thermocouple reading can be set at specified temperature values. For example, the electrical power to the heater can be automatically adjusted to keep the hot side temperature of thermoelectric devices under test constant, while varying the load current during a current-voltage (I-V) sweep. The control software collects and saves data automatically during performance tests at specified intervals (seconds, hours or days). The cold junction temperature of the TE devices being tested is controlled using a refrigerating / heating bath circulator, with temperature control in the range of 25 oC to 150 oC. Higher cold side temperatures up to 400–500 oC are also possible.
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