Schematic illustration of the superconducting highway for energy transportation and storage and superconductor levitation for the transport of products and people. Revolutionary style might combine superconductor levitation, lossless electricity transmission, and liquid hydrogen transport into one system.
Many magnetic levitation designs include the superconductor inside the vehicle, which is suspended above a magnetic track. In the teams proposal, the expense of cooling the superconductor and the cost of transferring hydrogen become the very same.
This one requirement makes developing a hyperefficient electrical grid or high-speed rail network very expensive. Unless, that is, a superconductor network might accomplish both tasks at the same time.
In the journal APL Energy, by AIP Publishing, scientists from the University of Houston, Adelwitz Technologiezentrum GmbH, and the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research established an evidence of idea for a superconducting highway that could transfer vehicles and electrical power, cooling the needed superconductors with a pipeline of liquid hydrogen.
A lot of magnetic levitation designs include the superconductor inside the vehicle, which is suspended above a magnetic track. The authors chose to flip that arrangement upside down, putting the superconductor on the ground and giving each car a magnet. The outcome is a system with numerous uses, putting it within the world of price.
” Superconductor-levitated magnetic vehicles, instead of magnet-levitated superconducting automobiles, can provide additional benefits such as electrical power transmission and storage,” said author Zhifeng Ren. “We established a brand-new superconducting system that can transport and keep a big amount of energy and also transfer individuals and goods with speeds of at least 400 miles per hour.”
Their style resolves the problem of superconductor cooling with a liquid hydrogen pipeline. Hydrogen is a promising clean fuel source with a complex handling concern: It is a gas at room temperature, so transferring and storing it involves either harmful pressurized tanks or costly cryogenic temperature levels. In the teams proposal, the cost of cooling the superconductor and the cost of transferring hydrogen end up being the very same.
Utilizing a scale design in the lab, they showed that these applications can exist side-by-side, and now they wish to construct a full-blown demonstration. The authors imagine their system would sit below existing highways to make usage of current facilities.
” People can drive onto the superconducting highway any time without waiting on a train or plane, and modifying the existing highways implies there is no need to obtain land for the tracks,” said Ren. “With enough financial backing, we might make a working system over a relatively short distance, like from Houston to Austin.”
For more on this research study, see Moving Energy, People and Cargo at 400 Miles per Hour.
Referral: “A multifunctional highway system including superconductor levitated automobiles and liquefied hydrogen” by O. Vakaliuk, Shaowei Song, U. Floegel-Delor, F. Werfel, Kornelius Nielsch and Zhifeng Ren, 24 April 2023, APL Energy.DOI: 10.1063/ 5.0139834.
Schematic illustration of the superconducting highway for energy transport and storage and superconductor levitation for the transportation of individuals and products. Credit: Vakaliuk et al
. Revolutionary design could integrate superconductor levitation, lossless electrical energy transmission, and liquid hydrogen transport into one system.
An evidence of idea for a superconducting highway has actually been developed, which can transport cars and electrical energy while using a liquid hydrogen pipeline for cooling. This ingenious style might allow high-speed transport of people and products at 400+ miles per hour.
Superconductors can perform electrical power with no resistance or power loss, and they can effortlessly cause magnets to levitate above them. These homes would make superconductors beneficial for high-speed trains or long-distance power transmission, other than for one glaring problem: superconductors just work at low temperatures, more than a hundred degrees below absolutely no.
