Results of preliminary experimental studies of thermal electron cooling of turbomashinery converters of spacecrafts

This article is devoted to thermionic cooling of turbomachine converters of spacecraft. Development is protected by patents for inventions and utility models. Moreover, the patent for the invention no. 2573551 is included in the list of Hundred Best Inventions of Russia of 2015. An experimental setup was developed on which primary experimental studies using a thermal imager were carried out. During thermal imaging studies, the presence of a thermal effect (cooling or heating) was recorded. The samples used were tungsten electrodes made of lanthanum tungsten with a diameter of 1 mm and a length of 175 mm, tungsten electrodes with processing (by ion implantation of lanthanum and cerium with doses of 1016 1/cm2), XH78T wire with a diameter of 1 mm, samples made of boride ceramics, plates and rods made of 20X25H20C2. Thus, for tungsten electrodes made of lanthanum tungsten without treatment, a decrease in temperature by 10−30 °C prevails, for an XH78T wire, an increase in temperature on average also by 10−30 °C prevails under similar conditions. On lanthanum tungsten with treatment, a temperature decrease of 45–55 °C was stably observed; a decrease of 91 °C was recorded once. For samples from lanthanum hexaboride (LaB6), an increase in temperature was recorded. A number of hypotheses have been proposed that explain the observed high effect of thermionic (thermal field) cooling. However, to prove (or refute), it is necessary to conduct high-precision measurements of the chemical composition of the surface of all tested and untested samples.