The gears were custom-manufactured by way of commercial supplier and modified in Henry’s lab inside the Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions (CNES) Lab at Georgia Tech. Asegun Henry, a strong assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s Woodruff College of Mechanical Engineering, and graduate student Caleb Amy—the paper’s earliest author—decided to challenge that assumption by attempting to make a ceramic pump.
Addressing yet another challenge, the researchers used another high-temperature material—graphite—to form the seals inside the pump, piping and joints. Seals are normally manufactured from flexible polymers, but they cannot withstand high temperatures..
Thermal energy, fundamental to power generation and lots of industrial processes, is most priceless at high temperatures because entropy—which tends to make thermal energy unavailable for conversion—declines with higher temperatures.
That technology differs from centrifugal and various pump technologies, but Henry chose it to its simplicity and ability to operate at relatively low speeds. This researchers used an external products pump, which uses rotating gear teeth to suck within the liquid tin and push it from an outlet. The pump operates in a very nitrogen environment to prevent oxidation at the extreme temperatures
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