Earticle

Practical superconducting wires are designed with a composite structure to meet the desired engineering characteristics by expert selection of materials and design of the architecture. In practice, the local strain exerted on the superconducting component influences the electromagnetic properties. Here, recent progress in methods used to measure the local strain in practical superconducting wires and conductors using quantum beam techniques is introduced. Recent topics on the strain dependence of critical current are reviewed for three major practical wires: Nb3Sn, BSCCO-2223 and REBCO tapes.

In order to improve resource value, separation of nonferrous metals obtained from crushed materials of home appliances is required. In this study, we aimed to develop a continuous separation system by magneto-Archimedes method using magnetic fluid as a medium and the permanent magnet as a magnetic field source. Firstly, the separation conditions were examined in which only copper is settled and the difference in levitation positions between aluminum and other metals are over 1 cm. Based on the results, levitation experiment of each metal and separation experiment from the mixture of nonferrous metals were confirmed. The separation experiment showed that the continuous separation of copper and aluminum from a mixture of nonferrous metals is possible.

In the mine exploration sites, sustainable treatment system of mine water with energy saving and minimized chemical additives is required. Since most of the mine water contains highly-concentrated ferrous ion, it is necessary to study on the removal method of iron ions. We propose the system consisting of two processes; precipitation process by air oxidation using solid catalyst-modified magnetite and separation process combining gravitational sedimentation and magnetic separation using a permanent magnet. Firstly, in the precipitation process (a former process of the system), we succeeded to prepare solid catalyst-modified magnetite. Air oxidation using solid catalyst-modified magnetite using Fe2(SO4)3 as a starting material showed high iron removal capability. Secondly, in the separation process (latter process of the system), solid catalyst-modified magnetite using Fe2(SO4)3 as a starting material can be separated by a superconducting bulk magnet and a permanent magnet.

The superconducting magnetic separation system has been developing to separate the iron oxide scale from the feed water of the thermal power plant. The accumulation in the boiler lowers the heat exchange rate or in the worst case damages it. For this reason, in order to prevent scale generation, controlling pH and redox potential is employed. However, these methods are not sufficient and then the chemical cleaning is performed regularly. A superconducting magnetic separation system is investigated for removing iron oxide scale in a feed water system. Water supply conditions of the thermal power plant are as follows, flow rate 400 t / h, flow speed 0.2 m / s, pressure 2 MPa, temperature 160 - 200 ° C, amount of scale generation 50 - 120 t / 2 years. The main iron oxide scale is magnetite (ferromagnetic substance) and its particle size is several tens μm. As the first step we are considering to introduce the system to the chemical cleaning process of the thermal power plant instead of the thermal power plant itself. The current status of development will be reported.

Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel on Earth and is used in a wide range of applications. The direct combustion of high-sulfur coal produces a large amount of sulfur dioxide, which is a toxic and corrosive gas. A new superconducting high gradient magnetic separation (HGMS) technology was studied to remove sulfur from high sulfur coal. The magnetic separation concentrate was obtained under the optimum parameters, such as a particle size of -200 mesh, a magnetic field strength of 2.0 T, a slurry concentration of 15 g/L, and a slurry flow rate of 600 ml/min. The removal rate of sulfur is up to 59.9%. The method uses a magnetic field to remove sulfur-containing magnetic material from a pulverized coal solution. It is simple process with, high efficiency, and is a new way.

Andong-dam was built up in 1967 and it is one of the biggest dams in Korea. Previous studies showed that the sediments are highly contaminated with heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, and lead. Many research projects are going on to find out the source of the contamination, to evaluate the toxicities to ecosystem, to estimate the volume of sediment to be treated and to find out a good remediation method. Reports show that the sediment is highly contaminated and the main contamination source is supposed to be abandoned mines and a zinc refinery located upper stream of the river. A magnetic separation has been tested as a treatment method for the dredged sediment. Lab scale test showed that the magnetically captured portion is about 10% in weight but the contamination of heavy metal is much higher than the contamination of the passed portion. This indicates that a magnetic separation could be applied for the purpose of reduction of sediment to be treated and for increasing the volume of low toxic sediments which can be dumped as general waste. A magnetic separation using a HGMS has been tested for the sediment with variable magnetic field and the results showed the higher magnetic field increase the captured portion but the concentrating effect of heavy metal was weakened. Further study is needed to establish a useful technology and optimization between decontamination and reduction of sediment volume.

Effects of the spherically shaped Ge and the rod-like carbon-coated Ge on the superconducting properties of MgB2 were investigated. Pure Ge and carbon-coated Ge nano-powders were synthesized under the different amount of CH4 (0 to 5 kPa) by using DC thermal plasma method. When the CH4 was added ~100 nm sized Ge with a spherical shape changed to rod-like morphology with a diameter of ~30-70 nm and a length of ~400-500 nm. Also it was confirmed that thin carbon layers of a few nanometers were formed along the rod length and the agglomerated carbons were found on the edges of rods. Pure spherical Ge and Ge/C rods were mixed and milled with Mg & B precursor to form the doped MgB2 bulk samples by the solid-state reaction method. Almost no change of Tc was noticed for the pure Ge-added MgB2, whereas Tc was found to decrease with the Ge/C-added MgB2 samples. It was found that the pure spherical Ge showed to have a negative effect on the flux pinning of MgB2. However, Ge/C rods can enhance the flux pinning property of Jc due to the coated carbon on Ge rods.

In this study, the effects of the compaction method for (Mg+2B) powders on the apparent density and superconducting properties of MgB2 bulk superconductor were investigated. The raw powders used in this study were nano-sized boron (B) and spherical magnesium (Mg). A batch of a powder mixture of (Mg+2B) was put in a steel mold and uniaxially pressed at 1 ton or 3 tons into pellets. Another batch of the powder mixture was uniaxially pressed at 1 ton and then pressed isostatically at 1800 kg/cm2 in the water chamber. All pellets were heat-treated at 650℃ for 1 h in flowing argon gas for the formation of MgB2. The apparent density of powder compacts pressed at 3 ton was higher than that at 1 ton. The cold isostatic pressing (CIP) in a water chamber allowed further increase of the apparent density of powder compacts, which influenced the pellet density of the final products (MgB2). The compaction methods (uniaxial pressing and CIP) did not affect the formation of MgB2 and superconducting critical temperature (Tc) of MgB2, but affected the critical current density (Jc) of MgB2 significantly. The sample with the high apparent density showed high Jc at 5 K and 20 K at applied magnetic fields (0-5 T).

This paper reports comparison between analytic and numerical simulation approaches for calculation of screening current and screening current induced field in a high temperature superconductor magnet. Bean slab model is adopted to calculate screening current and SCF analytically, while the finite element method numerically. A case study of screening current and SCF calculation are conducted with a magnet, a 7 T 68 mm cold-bore multi-width no-insulation GdBCO magnet built and tested by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory. In this study, we assume the magnet is dunked in liquid nitrogen at 77 K. Furthermore, the simulation results are compared in terms of computation time and accuracy. Finally, discussion on the different methods together with the comparison between the calculations and experiment is provided.