Earticle

Hydrogen, the lightest and the most abundant element in the universe becomes a mainstay of contemporary condensed matter physics, which is largely because its metallization is regarded as the holy grail of high-pressure physics and it is also due to recent observations of high Tc superconductivity in hydrogen-dense compounds at extremely high pressure. Contemporary static high-pressure technique is not enough to realize the metallization of solid hydrogen and hydrogen-dense compounds may significantly reduce the required transition pressure providing an excellent proxy study. In this brief review, I will introduce recent achievements of high-pressure study in solid hydrogen and hydrides.

Comprehensive utilization of sulfur-containing iron tailings (SIT) not only solves environmental problems but also creates certain economic value. The iron element from SIT was enriched by the superconducting high gradient magnetic separation (S-HGMS) technology in this study. In the experiments, the total iron content (TFe) was increased from 26.3% to 60.5% with the total sulfur content (TS) of 5.9% under the optimal parameters, i.e., a magnetic flux density of 0.4 T, a slurry flow rate of 1500 mL/min. The high-quality sulfur-containing material with TFe of more than 60% was obtained, which can be used for preparing high-sulfur free cutting steel. The S-HGMS technology can realize the resource utilization of iron tailings with high added value.

The method of removing micro-plastics from sea water has been developed using electro-magnetic force. Plastics are difficult to decompose and put a great load on the marine environment. Especially a plastic with a size of 5 mm or less is defined as micro-plastic and are carried by ocean currents over long distances, causing global pollution. These are not easily decomposed in the natural environment. The Lorentz force was generated in simulated sea water and its reaction force was applied to the micro-plastic to control their motion. Lorentz force was generated downward and the reaction force to the plastics was upward. The plastic used in the experiment was polystyrene with a diameter of 6 mm, and the density was 1.07 g/cm3. The polystyrene sphere levitated at the current density of 0.83 A/cm2 and the external field of 0.87T. The particle trajectory calculation was also made to design separation system using superconducting magnet.

The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions becomes a global issue, the main source of carbon dioxide emissions in the Asian region is the energy conversion sector, especially coal-fired power plants. We are working to develop technologies that will at least limit the increase in carbon dioxide emissions from the thermal power plants as one way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Our research aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by removing iron oxide scale from the feedwater system of thermal power plants using a superconducting high-gradient magnetic separation (HGMS) system, thereby reducing the loss of power generation efficiency. In this paper, the background of thermal power plants in Asia is outlined, followed by a case study of the introduction of a chemical cleaning line at an actual thermal power plant in Japan, and the possibility of introducing it into the thermal power plants in China based on the results.

Milking parlor wastewater contains high concentration suspended solid (SS), nitrogen, and/or phosphate as well as organic compounds. A new biological wastewater process by magnetic separation, magnetic activated sludge (MAS) process, was applied to milking parlor wastewater treatment process. A three step wastewater treatment process of coagulation sedimentation / ammonia stripping (C/S), magnetic activated sludge process and contact oxidation (CO) was proposed for removal of these pollutants. First step, C/S process recovered 96% TN and 96% PO4 3--P as resource for fertilizer from the wastewater. 81% biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) in wastewater was removed after MAS process. As a results, all pollutant concentrations satisfied Japanese effluent standards. Most of residual BOD and SS were removed by the CO process. It was estimated that the proposed process could reduce the process space to 1/7.

Advanced classification of Cs contaminated soil by using a magnetic force-assisted selection pipe was investigated. A selection pipe is a device that sort particles depending on their particle size, based on the relationship between buoyancy, drag, and gravity force acting on the particles. Radioactive cesium is concentrated in small-particle size soil components with a large specific surface area. Hence, the volume of the Cs contaminated soil can be reduced by recycling the large-particle size soil components with low radioactive concentration. One of the problems of the selection pipe was that the radioactive concentration of the stayed soil in the selection pipe exceeds 8000 Bq/kg, which is the standard value of recycling of Cs contaminated soil, due to low classification accuracy. In this study, magnetic fields were applied to the lab-scale selection pipe from upper side to improve the classification accuracy and to reduce the radioactive concentration of the stayed soil.

Milking parlor wastewater contains not only high concentrations of organic compounds, but often animal antibiotics. To discharge the antibiotics to public water area cause problem of antibiotics resistant bacteria. Magnetic separation was applied into improvement of milking parlor wastewater treatment process. A new process, composed of a magnetic activated sludge (MAS) process and a contact oxidation (CO) process, was proposed in this study. This process was evaluated by the simulated milking parlor wastewater (4500 mg/L CODCr and 10 mg/L tetracycline) using a bench scale experimental setup. As a result, the process was able to removed 97% CODCr as well as 94% tetracycline. The MLVSS (mixed liquor volatile suspended solids) concentration of MAS was maintained at 12000 mg/L without excess sludge drawing. This process was considered to be useful as treatment process for milking parlor wastewater in which waste-milk including antibiotics is often discharged.

Nickel (Ni) is a kind of the rare earth resources. Since Ni-containing waste is drained after several plating operations in the factories, the effective recycling technique has been expected to be introduced. An actual magnetic separation technique using HTS bulk magnet generating the strong magnetic field has succeeded in collecting the paramagnetic slurry containing Ni-sulphate coarse crystals which were fabricated from the Ni-plating waste. The Ni compound in the collected slurry was identified as NiSO4/6H2O, showing slight differences in the particle size and magnetic susceptibility between the samples attracted and not-attract to the magnetic pole. This preferential extraction suggests us a novel recycling method of Ni resource because the compound is capable of recycling back to the plating processes as a raw material.

We developed an optimization process of the pulsed laser deposition method to grow epitaxial CeCoIn5 thin films on MgF2 substrates. The effects of different deposition parameters on film growth were extensively studied by analyzing the measured Xray diffraction patterns. All the deposited films contained small amounts of CeIn3 impurity phase and misoriented CeCoIn5, for which the c-axis of the unit cell is perpendicular to the normal vector of the substrate surface. The deposition temperature, target composition, laser energy density, and repetition rate were found effective in the formation of (00l)-oriented CeCoIn5 as well as the undesired phases such as CeIn3, misoriented CeCoIn5 along the (112) and (h00). Our results provide a set of deposition parameters that produce high-quality epitaxial CeCoIn5 thin films with sufficiently low amounts of impurity phases and can serve as a reference for future studies to optimize the deposition process further.

In this study, the effect of the size of B powder on the critical current density (Jc) of MgB2 prepared by an in situ reaction process was investigated. Various combinations of B powders were made using a micron B, ball-milled B and nano B powders. Micron B powder was reduced by ball milling and the milled B powder was mixed with the micron B or nano B powder. The mixing ratios of the milled B and micron or nano B were 100:0, 50:50 and 0:100. Non-milled micron B powder was also mixed with nano powder in the same ratios. Pellets of (2B+Mg) prepared with various B mixing ratios were heat-treated to form MgB2. Tc of MgB2 decreased slightly when the milled B was used, whereas the Jc of MgB2 increased with increasing amount of the milled B or the nano powder. The used of the milled B and nano B power promoted the formation MgB2 during heat treatment. In addition to the enhanced formation of MgB2, the use of the powders reduced the grain size of MgB2. The use of the milled and nano B powder increased the Jc of MgB2. The highest Jc was achieved when 100% nano B powder was used. The Jc enhancement is attributed to the high volume fraction of the superconducting phase (MgB2) and the large grain boundaries, which induces the flux pinning at the magnetic fields.

The DC system has less power loss compared to the AC system because there is no influence of frequency and dielectric loss. However, the zero-crossing point of the current is not detected in the event of a short circuit fault, and it is difficult to interruption due to the large fault current that occurs during the opening, so the reliability of the DC breaker is required. As a solution to this, an LC resonance DC circuit breaker combined a superconducting element has been proposed. This is a method of limiting the fault current, which rises rapidly in case of a short circuit fault, with the quench resistance of the superconducting element, and interruption the fault current passing through the zero-crossing point through LC resonance. The superconducting current limiting element combined to the DC circuit breaker plays an important role in reducing the electrical burden of the circuit breaker. However, at the beginning of a short circuit fault, superconducting devices also have a large electrical burden due to large fault currents, which can destroy the element. In this paper, the reactor is connected to the source side of the circuit using PSCAD/EMTDC. After that, the change of the fault current according to the reactor capacity and the electrical burden of the superconducting element were confirmed through simulation. As a result, it was confirmed that the interruption time was delayed as the capacity of the reactor connected to the source side increased, but peak of the fault current decreased, the zero-crossing point generation time was shortened, and the electrical burden of the superconducting element decreased.

A thermoelectric cooler (TEC) is promising as an alternative refrigeration technology for the sake of its inherent advantages; no-moving parts and refrigerant-free in its operation. Due to the compactness, reliability and excellence in temperature stability, TECs have been widely used for small cooling devices. In recent years, thermoelectric devices have been attractive technologies that not only serve the needs of cooling and heating applications but also meet the demand for energy by recycling waste heat. In this research paper, multistage TEC is proposed as a concept of demonstrating the idea of transient cooling technology. The key idea of transient cooling is to harnesses the thermal mass installed at the interfacial level of the stages. By storing heat temporally at the thermal mass, the multistage TEC can readily reach lower temperatures than that by a steady-state operation. The multistage TEC consists of four different sizes of thermoelectric modules and they are operated with an optimized current. Once the cold-part of the uppermost stage is reached at the no-load temperature, the current is successively supplied to the lower stages with a certain time interval; 25, 50 and 75 seconds. The results show the temperatures that can be ultimately reached at the cold-side of the lowermost stage are 197, 182 and 237 K, respectively. It can be concluded that the timing or total amount of the current fed to each thermoelectric module is the key parameter to determine the no-load temperature.