Preliminary Design of a Miniature Thermoelectric Generator

The U.S. Marine Corps has need for power sources in the 500 Watt area. These sources should be highly reliable, small, lightweight, signal suppressed, and be able to use liquid fuels, preferably Diesel, as the energy source. The desire to burn Diesel stems from the Armed Services desire to use Diesel as their main fuel source. Other fuels such as gasoline create a logistic problem and therefore, is to be avoided if at all possible. There are currently no known power supplies of this type commercially available on the open market. The Diesel motor generator sets that are available have higher power outputs and typically have a rather low mean-time before failure MTBF. Earlier contact with Army personnel indicate that the MTBF of small portable Diesel motor generator sets were about 175 hours. Similar experience has been reported by the U.S. Coast Guard in both their Major Aids to Navigation, Major ATON, and their Weather Data Buoys