European team announces superconductivity breakthrough

This material, a copper oxide, is like a thread that conducts 100 times more electricity than copper. With this thread you can for example make cables to transport much more electricity or generate much more intense magnetic fields than today," he [project coordinator] told AFP.

In superconductivity—first discovered in mercury in 1911—electrical resistance suddenly drops to zero in some metals when they are cooled to near absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius, -459 Fahrenheit).

This also produces a strong magnetic field—an effect which has found applications, including in MRI body scanners.

To achieve zero-loss power transmission now, cables encased in tubes can be cooled with liquid nitrogen to make them superconductive—but the complex and expensive technology has not been commercially used on a large scale.

Phys.org, phys.org...]European team announces superconductivity breakthrough[/url].

GAH! There are no specific in this announcement! Like what variant of copper oxide cuprate was created? How high can the temperature be? Most super conductors have to be cooled to 4 °K (that is degrees Kelvin which starts measuring at absolute zero) with other high temperature superconductors only having to be cooled to 77 °K which is where liquid nitrogen is. This announcement has no specifics! Known cuprate REBCO (rare earth barium copper oxide) becomes superconductive at this temp too.

Besides not having specifics, efficient transmission of power is one of those items that is needed to have happen, in my opinion, before a nuclear fusion reactor can be turned on. The item is energy storage at the grid level.

Either way, this is good news for MRI machines. A high temperature superconductor is always welcome news. Even for magnetic coils in a nuclear fusion reactor. If this can manufactured in length, power distribution would benefit immensely.

If anybody hears anymore about this please provide some details as some of us here are detail oriented.

this is mega big news.

this will basically remove most the biggest challenges to conductivity, cooling and efficiency.

the only thing im questioning is the development of such synthetic alloy. maybe we should put "cheaper" in quotation marks until they process is reviewed.

Eurotapes is a four-year project involving world leaders in the field of superconductivity from nine European nations -- Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.

The European Union covers the bulk of its budget of 20 million euros ($21 million).

Yahoo! News, European team announces superconductivity breakthrough.

So there is a little bit more on this story. I hate these: "Here is a press release" type science stories because there is little to no change in any of the information.



a reply to: odzeandennz

Yeah, I hope this pans out. The trick always is to make something to scale up to industrial levels. I think I read that 10% of electricity is lost to heat in transmission. So if that can be made up then there would be less pollutants in the air which would do the world some good. Even if it is only used like from a wind farm to an electrical substation and storage that would be huge!

I don't think electrical distribution has changed much since Tesla's time! So a new method will always be news!

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

This material, a copper oxide, is like a thread that conducts 100 times more electricity than copper. With this thread you can for example make cables to transport much more electricity or generate much more intense magnetic fields than today," he [project coordinator] told AFP.

In superconductivity—first discovered in mercury in 1911—electrical resistance suddenly drops to zero in some metals when they are cooled to near absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius, -459 Fahrenheit).

This also produces a strong magnetic field—an effect which has found applications, including in MRI body scanners.

To achieve zero-loss power transmission now, cables encased in tubes can be cooled with liquid nitrogen to make them superconductive—but the complex and expensive technology has not been commercially used on a large scale.

Phys.org, March 15, 2017 - European team announces superconductivity breakthrough.

GAH! There are no specific in this announcement! Like what variant of copper oxide cuprate was created? How high can the temperature be? Most super conductors have to be cooled to 4 °K (that is degrees Kelvin which starts measuring at absolute zero) with other high temperature superconductors only having to be cooled to 77 °K which is where liquid nitrogen is. This announcement has no specifics! Known cuprate REBCO (rare earth barium copper oxide) becomes superconductive at this temp too.

Besides not having specifics, efficient transmission of power is one of those items that is needed to have happen, in my opinion, before a nuclear fusion reactor can be turned on. The item is energy storage at the grid level.

Either way, this is good news for MRI machines. A high temperature superconductor is always welcome news. Even for magnetic coils in a nuclear fusion reactor. If this can manufactured in length, power distribution would benefit immensely.

If anybody hears anymore about this please provide some details as some of us here are detail oriented.



Hey TEOT, do a better job on constructing your BBCodes!

Love,

TEOT

"This new material could be used to make more potent and lighter wind turbines," he added, predicting it will make it possible to manufacture wind turbines one day with double the potency than existing ones.

In the long run the project could "revolutionise the production of renewable energy," the Institute said in a statement.

This is from the Yahoo! source.

This new material could be used to make more potent and lighter wind turbines," he added, predicting it will make it possible to manufacture wind turbines one day with double the potency than existing ones.

In the long run the project could "revolutionise the production of renewable energy," the Institute said in a statement.

And this is the Phys.org source.

This is a prime example of press release science. Surprised it has not shown up on Eurekalert! yet.

The ability to carry high electrical current in the presence of a strong magnetic field is a key enabler for the superconducting applications of the future. Using a technique called pinning, superconducting wire performance is dramatically improved. The traditional approach is to add more elements when manufacturing the superconducting layer, thereby increasing the complexity of an already challenging process.

Quiram continued, “STI has demonstrated the ability to incorporate pinning into our superconductor without using additional elements..."

...

Rare Earth, Barium, Copper Oxide (ReBCO) materials are recognized as a superior superconductor by offering better performance in a magnetic field. STI’s RCE-CDR process grows a ReBCO superconductor film onto a flexible template. This process requires accurate temperature, uniform pressure, precise ratios of elements and the presence of oxidizing atmospheres to grow high performance superconducting materials. The company’s RCE-CDR system is scaled for large batch operation to insure every portion of superconducting wire has uniform material properties.

Globenewswire.com (press release), Feb. 16, 2017 - Superconductor Technologies Inc. Awarded U.S. Patent for Unique Manufacturing Process.

Seems like Eurotapes may have been playing catch up with STI. STI looks like they are out of Texas.

The above notes "pinning" which I read as adding more elements to the mix. Sometimes called a dopant, the idea is that the dopant adds to the superconductivity. But it can also interfere with the property. So if they can beef up REBCO without adding more to it then that is great! And it happens in the production of the REBCO tape itself which they already have at large scale production.

Looks like this might be a sort of arms race between high temperature superconducting tapes! STI vs. Eurotapes in a copper oxide showdown!

Arecibo was using liquid nitrogen in the 1960's IIRC so?

a reply to: Cauliflower

For power distribution?? Or was it to isolate equipment for the frequencies they were observing?

The new superconductor could be used for power distribution since it would not require cryonics of liquid helium (which is expensive). They even envision using it in wind farms because it uses liquid nitrogen. The expense of using liquid helium has companies like GE trying to reduce their MRI and NMI device because of that cost alone. The OP announcement goes a long way towards doing exactly that. But I am PO'd that there are no specifics in the announcement.

Smaller motors, smaller generators, maybe even something crazy like a superconducting flywheel for energy storage, are just a few other applications I can think of right off the top of my head.

Of course the real winner, if we are ever told about it, would be a room temperature superconductor but that will have to wait until one is realized.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

This material, a copper oxide, is like a thread that conducts 100 times more electricity than copper.

That don't seem right. Not even sure what that is supposed to mean?

a reply to: D8Tee

Right? It is on a science sight that will at least explain "1 astronomical unit is the mean distance between the earth and sun" in one of its other stories.

This one? They took the press release and posted it. There are no scientific terms in it. No measurements. And yes, that statement too. That does not help one understand what has been created!

Basically, a normal wire can only carry 1/100th of the amount of cooled superconductor wire. But like you said, so what? ALL superconductors do that! Why is this one special? How does it differ from other high temp superconductor wires or tapes? I had to guess that because of their "liquid nitrogen" blurb that their wire does not need to be cooled with liquid helium. But that is not revolutionary because it already exists.

So I will keep an eye out for what actually was created. I hope it is cool and can find other uses.

for now otherwise I'd be crying....

So the group is lead by the Institute of Material Sciences - Barcelona (CSIC)

I found their original press release, in English, but it is nearly word for word the same as Yahoo! and the Phys.org article.

What they did do was encase the wire in a tube that allows them to use liquid nitrogen to cool the tape to superconducting temperatures. They created 600 meters of it and ran some electricity tests.

The last blurb also mentions "room temperature superconductors" but it is not anything different than OP source.

More digging around tomorrow!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF "degrees Kelvin

" doesn't exist, and hasn't for 50 years.

a reply to: Quaria

Yup, like Watt and Volt it is a measurement unit so "degree" is redundant. It is just "Kelvin"

My bad.

Eurotapes is a four and a half year project funded directly by the European Commission with 20 million euros. It’s an collaborative effort involving researchers from University of Cambridge, University of Antwerp, University Autonoma de Barcelona, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Ghent University, Vienna University of Technology, Institut de Ciencia de Materials de Barcelona, ENEA, IEE Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institut Néel CNRS, IFW, LEITAT, Bruker, Evico, Theva, Nexans, La Farga, Oxolutia, KIT and Deutsche Nanoschicht.

and

Moreover, Obradors and colleagues are also working on superconductive generators which are much lighter than conventional ones (only a third of the weight) and produce more electricity. Obradors says that if we’d replace conventional generators with superconductive ones, a single wind turbine could produce between two and three times more electricity.

ZMEscience.com - Superconductivity breakthrough could reset Europe’s power lines and make renewable energy more competitive.

A little more news. This article is a bit more speculative about the effects of swapping out power transmission lines and does some explaining on how the lines currently work. It also quotes from the press release so is not really a source of new information.

That is a pretty big consortium! I am glad to see that a lot of people are thinking about power lines in a different manner!

Right now, the record is held by cuprates, which have demonstrated superconductivity at atmospheric pressure at temperatures as high as 138 K (−135 °C), and 164 K (−109 °C) under high pressure.

(same source)

That is nice info to know.

EUROTAPES project is coming to an end in February 2017 and the project consortium is meeting in Barcelona on the 13th-15th of this month to present their final results. After 54 months of research, the project will be closing as it has achieved its objectives. The Eurotapes project has managed to produce 600 meters of superconducting tape with a process that reduces the cost of production of superconducting materials, simplifies its architecture and improves its capacity in high magnetic fields through various temperature scales.

Eutotapes.eu, news - Final Meeting of EUROTAPES project in Barcelona.

And here is the tech, nerdy, but useful information that should have been in their PR article too!

Demonstration high critical currents (Ic over 400Amps /cm-w, at 77K and self-field and Ic over 1000A/cm-w at 5K and 15T) and pinning forces (Fp over 100GN/m3 at 60 K). The CSD and PLD technologies will be combined to achieve optimized tape architectures, nanostructures and processes to address a variety of HTS applications at self-field, high and ultrahigh magnetic fields.

Nextbigfuture.com, March 15, 2017 European superconducting tape achieves goals of lower cost and more efficient superconducting tape.

The project ended. That should have been the first thing mentioned in their PR article! Putting them together, my press release would look something like this:

Our project, Eurotapes, ended and we met our goals. At our final meeting, March 13-15 our findings were discussed at a gathering in Barcelona. 600 meters of low cost, high temperature superconductor power cable was created and tested through various temperature ranges. High magnet fields were also demonstrated at the same time.

A self-contained liquid nitrogen cooled copper oxide high temperature superconductor power cable was created and tested for load at high temperature (77 K) and at low temperature (5 K). Production quality was kept while lowering costs.

Applications of this research can be applied to creating increased magnetic field strength like those used at CERN and ITER/DEMO; power distribution; and generators like those used for wind farms where electric output could be doubled if the HT tape is used.

That is a press release! It tells you who, what, why this is news and worthy of attention! The statements are simple and to the point. I hope that makes sense to everybody because it does to me now! It has some numbers but not enough to detract from what was accomplished. Next I would name the world-wide teams that worked on this project:

In addition to the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, the ICMAB and LEITAT; The universities of Cambridge, Antwerp and Ghent, the Technological University of Vienna and six technology centers and 8 companies from Belgium, Austria, Romania, Germany, France, Slovakia and Italy.

(Eurotapes site)

Mystery solved! It only took 4 sites and a few days! LOL

Now what do think of this garbled, bassackwards, thread I created ATS??

So what is the new claim? The molecule in question is an aromatic hydrocarbon called teraterphynal... As a material it is used laser dyes and sunscreen, it is unremarkable.

[Researchers] at Hubei University in China say they have made it superconduct at 123 K by doping it with potassium

MIT Technologyreview.com, March 24, 2017 - High Temperature Superconductivity Claimed for Sunscreen Molecule.

That is a crazy accomplishment! (There is some bloc on the site so any and all typos are mine). There is more to it (more processing occurs rather than just doping it) and it is baked for a while under pressure. Then they put it in some capsules for safe keeping. But when they ran the temperature check, at -150 °C all resistance disappeared.

Even near room temperature will save money. Combined with the tapes-power distribution cable news... the idea is closer to realization as ever!

OP: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
(re-arranged, fixed link, added a clarification)

This material, a copper oxide, is like a thread that conducts 100 times more electricity than copper. With this thread you can for example make cables to transport much more electricity or generate much more intense magnetic fields than today," he [project coordinator] told AFP.

In superconductivity—first discovered in mercury in 1911—electrical resistance suddenly drops to zero in some metals when they are cooled to near absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius, -459 Fahrenheit).

This also produces a strong magnetic field—an effect which has found applications, including in MRI body scanners.

To achieve zero-loss power transmission now, cables encased in tubes can be cooled with liquid nitrogen to make them superconductive—but the complex and expensive technology has not been commercially used on a large scale.

Phys.org, European team announces superconductivity breakthrough.

GAH! There are no specific in this announcement! Like what variant of copper oxide cuprate was created? How high can the temperature be? Most super conductors have to be cooled to 4 °K (that is degrees Kelvin which starts measuring at absolute zero) with other high temperature superconductors only having to be cooled to 77 °K which is where liquid nitrogen is. This announcement has no specifics! Known cuprate REBCO (rare earth barium copper oxide) becomes superconductive at this temp too.

Besides not having specifics, efficient transmission of power is one of those items that is needed to have happen, in my opinion, before a nuclear fusion reactor can be turned on. The [other] item is energy storage at the grid level.

What the OP was about was about a team making a high temperature superconducting transmission wire to transmit electricity without any losses to heat (resistance).

I quipped that it was one of those items that seems to need to be in place prior to a valued energy source (renewables, like wind or solar, or, even the carbonless holy grail, nuclear fusion) is added to the grid.

The European team had one purpose, to actually create and demonstrate the practical use of a superconducting transmission line. It was more of a POC than anything else.

Now, a year later, it seems like this idea has caught on!

The two-pole direct current power transmission cable was formed by twisting two 10-meter long monopole CORC [Conductor on Round Core, same source] cables together. The cable was cooled by pressurized cryogenic helium gas circulation and tested at currents exceeding 4,000 amperes.

These cables are a major improvement on the current technology because they are much thinner, and thus smaller and lighter than other high-temperature superconducting cables.

Advanced Conductor Technologies, located in Boulder, Colorado, focuses on the commercialization of CORC cables for the next generation of fusion and accelerator magnets and for power transmission applications.

Florida State Univ. (fsu.edu, news), June 18, 2018 - Center for Advanced Power Systems and Advanced Conductor Technologies demonstrate new superconducting power cable.

They were originally focused on providing the Navy with a electric cable for an all electric ship. They took two of their cables for bi-directional DC transmission. They achieved their goal and realized there are other applications including nuclear fusion reactor magnets. But the main thing is "power transmission".

The cable system is designed for a continuous power of 2,300 megawatts (MW). Losses under a high current load are significantly smaller than those of a comparable above-ground line or conventional cables with a copper conductor. Superconductor technology might also be advantageous in transmission line construction, explains Hanno Stagge, who manages the project at TenneT: "A conventional cable system in the transmission grid requires twelve three-phase power cables. A superconducting cable system can transmit the same power with six cables." ...
...
While conventional low-temperature superconductors have transition temperatures below 23 kelvin, i.e. minus 250°C, high-temperature superconductors have comparably high transition temperatures. With liquid nitrogen, they are cooled down to an operation temperature of about 77 kelvin, i.e. minus 196°C, and can be operated at comparably low costs, because less energy is needed for cooling.

Experience gained by KIT [Karlsruhe Institute of Technology] in the "AmpaCity" cable project shows that use of superconductor technology in energy infrastructure really works. With more than one kilometer length, the AmpaCity cable is the longest high-temperature superconductor cable in the world.

phys.org, July 5, 2018 - New superconductor technology for the transmission grid.

The FSU cable uses helium which has to be cooled more and helium is expensive. The KIT cable uses liquid nitrogen which is more cost effective. Either way, losses transmission of electricity (ok, near losses) is idea we should probably see more of even without a room temperature superconductor.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

It all sounds very impressive, nearly as impressive as the nuclear fission thread you bumped.....but the same happened again, I sort of followed it at first then my brain went all foggy like and everything just went flying over my head.
Exactly the same thing happened when I tried to read it again....no wonder I never chose a career in the sciences, unlike my older brother who is a complete science geek!

I understand the basic principle of both threads, but the details burn my brain.

And I also understand the significant changes it could mean for mankind as a whole if both became viable.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF


am I wrong in thinking overhead power-line transmission could be problematic due to the more powerful magnetic fields or are these shielded from the environment?

f

a reply to: Freeborn


Its all good! I am a fanboy of nuclear fusion so try to keep the subject alive and well here on ATS. My practical thoughts on it are this: nuclear fusion requires efficient energy transmission and energy storage to be utilized effectively.

This thread is just one leg of the three legged stool. I have another thread up on grid-level electricity storage using these things called "redox flow batteries" (RFB). Funny that Lockheed has their own RFB sitting around, huh?

a reply to: fakedirt

I don't know if they are "more powerful" but they do produce magnetic fields (over head power lines). The debate on health effects has been ongoing for some time. The shielding is more for electricity. It is the movement of electricity through the wire that generate the magnetic fields. At first it was thought that the effect was at low enough of a frequency (ELF, extremely low freq.) as to not cause any health concerns. That is where researchers, both pro and con, are stalemated at. They argue over even how magnetic fields are measured! One study will say, "It is all OK", while another will say, "See! It causes cancer!" I've kind of lost track where things stand now.

My thoughts are, even repeated, low dose exposure of anything is probably not good for you in the long run.

The nice thing about the superconducting wires is that the magnetic fields are localized practically to the surface of the wire and the cooling/shielding block the rest (or at least, absorbs it before going out into the surrounding area). I guess that means they are safer.