Earticle

Large-scale civil engineering works discharge a large amount of soil suspension contaminated with natural heavy metals. Most of the heavy metal ions due to industrial activities and minings are accumulated in the soils and the sediments of lakes and inner bays through the rivers. It is necessary to remove heavy metals from the soils and the sediments, because some of these heavy metals, such as arsenic and cadmium, have significant biological effects even in small amounts. This study proposes a new volume reduction method of the contaminated soils and sediments by superconducting magnetic separation. Our process can remove the specific minute minerals selectively, which adsorbs heavy metals depending on pH. As a fundamental study, the adsorption behaviors of arsenic and cadmium on minute minerals as a function of pH were investigated, and the adsorption mechanism was discussed based on the crystal structure and pH dependence of surface potential in each minute minerals.

When rivers and lakes are contaminated with numerous contaminants, usually the contaminants are finally deposited on the sediments of the waterbody. Many clean up technologies have been developed for the contaminated sediments. Among several technologies dredging is one of the best methods because dredging removes all the contaminated sediments from the water and the contaminated sediments can be completely treated with physical and chemical methods. However the most worried phenomenon is suspension of fine particles during the dredging process. The suspended particle can release contaminants into water and resulted in spread of the contaminants and the increase of risk due to the resuspension of the precipitated contaminants such as heavy metals and toxic organic compounds. Therefore the success of the dredging process depends on the prevention of resuspension of fine particles. Advanced dredging processes employ pumping the sediment with water onto a ship and release the turbid water pumped with sediment into waterbody after collection of sediment solids. Before release of the turbid water into lake or river, just a few minutes allowed to precipitate the suspended particle due to the limited area on a dredging ship. However the fine particle cannot be removed by the gravitational settling over a few minutes. Environmental technology such as coagulation and precipitation could be applied for the settling of fine particles. However, the process needs coagulants and big settling tanks. For the quick settling of the fine particles suspended during dredging process magnetic separation has been tested in current study. Magnetic force increased the settling velocity and the increased settling process can reduce the volume of settling tank usually located in a ship for dredging. The magnetic assisted settling also decreased the heavy metal release through the turbid water by precipitating highly contaminated particles with magnetic force.

Circulating cooling systems consume a lot of water, and most of the water from river, which contains a large amount of Ca2+, Mg2+, et al, and has the characteristics of high hardness and large turbidity. The water can form scale on the surface of the heat exchanger and the pipes, which would reduce the heat transfer efficiency and affect the heat exchanger’s length of service. In this study, the Superconducting High Gradient Magnetic Separation (S-HGMS) technology was used in river water treatment and the effects of agent A, agent B, and S-HGMS on the removal of hardness and turbidity were discussed. The results showed that the hardness removal rate reached 71.3% and the turbidity was decreased to 0.5 NTU.

Comprehensive utilization of tungsten tailings resources not only solves environmental problems but also creates huge economic benefits. The high content of iron impurity in tungsten tailings will have adverse effect on the downstreamcomprehensive utilization, whether flotation or pickling. In this paper, the Superconducting High Gradient Magnetic Separation(S-HGMS) is used to remove of Fe impurities from tungsten tailings. The optimal experimental parameters are as follows: background magnetic induction intensity is 3.0T, slurry flow velocity is 500ml/min. The Fe removal rate of Fe was 68.8% and the recovery rate was 59.53%.

We investigated the flux pinning property of GdBa2Cu3O7-x (GdBCO) films on top of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO) nanoparticles deposited by a surface decoration. Both GdBCO films and LSMO nano particles were deposited by pulsed laser deposition and the number of laser pulses were varied from 80 to 320 in order to control the density of the LSMO nanoparticles. The magnetization data at 77 K showed that the critical current density (Jc) was enhanced in all of the GdBCO films with LSMO nanoparticles and that the Jc enhancement was found to be inversely proportional to the LSMO nanoparticle density. Structural analyses revealed that LSMO nanoparticles induce a compressive strain in the GdBCO films resulting in a disordering in the CuO2 plane. Therefore, the enhanced flux pinning property in the GdBCO with LSMO nanoparticles was attributed to the competing effect between the increase of pinning centers and the increase of compressive strain in the superconducting phase.

Since 2014, Sam Dong Co., Ltd. has successfully developed high-performance MgB2 superconducting wires with a kilometer-scale. Herein, we studied performances of various MgB2 wires fabricated by the Sam Dong with different Cu fractions and diameters for practical applications. Critical current densities of our commercial wire, 18+‘1’Cu multifilamentary MgB2 wire, are estimated to be 270,000 A/cm2 at 3 T and 4.2 K and 100,000 A/cm2 at 2 T and 20 K, respectively. We further discuss research progress of various MgB2 superconducting wires at Sam Dong Co., Ltd and make an effort to align with customers’ requirements.

Sam Dong Co., Ltd. has been succeeded in producing a 1 km multi-filament conductor in 2018. So far, we become more widespread to fabricate a variety of customized multi-filament wires such as 6 + '1' Cu, 18 + '1' Cu, and 36 + '1' Cu. In this work, we discuss the research progress on various MgB2 wires over the past three years. We also provide a brief review for applications with our wires.

This paper presents comparative research on characteristics of air-cored and iron-cored high-temperature superconductor (HTS) field winding synchronous motors. The 100 kW air-cored model is designed analytically by Spatial Harmonic Method, and based on this model, the iron-cored model having the same output power is designed for comparison. Due to the substantial difference of permeability property between air and iron-core, there is a difference of magnetic field magnitude and angle with respect to the HTS tape c-axis, resulting in a different critical current of the field winding considering the anisotropic property of HTS tape. For a detailed comparison between two models, the following key motor characteristics are calculated through the Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation: 1) critical current; 2) HTS wire length; and 3) torque characteristics. From the simulation results, it can be confirmed that the critical current value of the iron-cored model increases by 33 %. Also, in the case of the superconducting wire consumption, those of the iron-cored and air-cored models are 95.3 m and 815.6 m, respectively. So the wire usage can be reduced to about 88 % by using iron core. However, in terms of torque characteristics, the torque ripple of the iron-cored model is about twice as large as that of the air-cored model, which may be a disadvantage on vibration and acoustic noise.