An Alkali-metal thermal to electric converter works by pumping something, usually sodium, though any Alkali metal will do, through, around, and over, a circuit. The heat evaporates the sodium at one end. This puts it at high pressure. It then passes through/over the Anode, releasing electrons, thus, charge. It then passes through an electrolyte to conduct it to the other side. This works because the electrolyte chosen can conduct Ions, but not electrons so well. At the Cathode, the Alkali metal gets its electrons back, effectively pumping electrons through the external circuit. The pressure from the electrolyte pushes it to a low-pressure vapor chamber, where it “cools off” to a liquid again. An electromagnetic pump, or a wick, takes this liquid sodium back to the hot side.
This device accepts a heat input in a range 900–1300 K and produces direct current with predicted device efficiencies of 15–40%. In the AMTEC, sodium is driven around a closed thermodynamic cycle between a high-temperature heat reservoir and a cooler reservoir at the heat rejection temperature. The unique feature of the AMTEC cycle is that sodium ion conduction between a high-pressure or -activity region and a low-pressure or -activity region on either side of a highly ionically conducting refractory solid electrolyte is thermodynamically nearly equivalent to an isothermal expansion of sodium vapor between the same high and low pressures.  Electrochemical oxidation of neutral sodium at the anode leads to sodium ions, which traverse the solid electrolyte, and electrons, which travel from the anode through an external circuit, where they perform electrical work, to the low-pressure cathode, where they recombine with the ions to produce low-pressure sodium gas. The sodium gas generated at the cathode then travels to a condenser at the heat-rejection temperature of perhaps 400–700 K, where liquid sodium reforms.  The AMTEC thus is an electrochemical concentration cell, which converts the work generated by expansion of sodium vapor directly into electric power.
The converter is based on the electrolyte used in the sodium–sulfur battery, sodium beta″-alumina, a crystalline phase of somewhat variable composition containing aluminum oxide, AlO, and sodium oxide, NaO, in a nominal ratio of 5:1, and a small amount of the oxide of a small-cation metal, usually lithium or magnesium, which stabilizes the beta″ crystal structure. The sodium beta″-alumina solid electrolyte (BASE) ceramic is nearly insulating with respect to transport of electrons and is a thermodynamically stable phase in contact with both liquid sodium and sodium at low pressure.