Superconductors: Material raises hope of energy revolution
Scientists have found the first material that displays a much sought-after property at room temperature. It is superconducting, which means electrical current flows through it with perfect efficiency – with no energy wasted as heat.
At the moment, a lot of the energy we produce is lost as heat because of electrical resistance. So room temperature “superconducting” materials could revolutionise the electrical grid.
Until this point, achieving superconductivity has required cooling materials to very low temperatures. When the property was discovered in 1911, it was found only at close to the temperature known as absolute zero (-273.15C).
Since then, physicists have found materials that superconduct at higher – but still very cold – temperatures.
IMAGE COPYRIGHT REUTERSThe team behind this latest discovery says it’s a major advance in a search that has already gone on for a century.
“Because of the limits of low temperature, materials with such extraordinary properties have not quite transformed the world in the way that many might have imagined,” said Dr Ranga Dias, from the University of Rochester, in New York State.
“However, our discovery will break down these barriers and open the door to many potential applications.”
Dr Dias added that room temperature superconductors “can definitely change the world as we know it”.
In the US, electrical grids lose more than 5% of their energy through the process of transmission. So tackling this loss could potentially save billions of dollars and have an effect on the climate.
IMAGE COPYRIGHT UNI ROCHESTER / J. ADAM FENSTERThe scientists observed the superconducting behaviour in a carbonaceous sulphur hydride compound at a temperature of 15C.
However, the property only appeared at extremely high pressures of 267 billion pascals – about a million times higher than typical tyre pressure. This obviously limits its practical usefulness.
So Dr Dias says the next goal will be to find ways to create room temperature superconductors at lower pressures, so they will be economical to produce in greater volume.
These materials could have many other applications. These include a new way to propel levitated trains – like the Maglev trains that “float” above the track in Japan and Shanghai, China. Magnetic levitation is a feature of some superconducting materials.
Another application would be faster, more efficient electronics.
“With this kind of technology, you can take society into a superconducting society where you’ll never need things like batteries again,” said co-author Ashkan Salamat of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
The results are published in the prestigious journal Nature.
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IMAGE COPYRIGHT J. ADAM FENSTERRead more at www.bbc.co.uk
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Raj
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This is the future
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Max Polo
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“However, the property only appeared at extremely high pressures of 267 billion pascals – about a million times higher than typical tyre pressure”
my goodness – isnt easier to go down to minus whatever instead…
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tom0mason
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“Here we report superconductivity in a photochemically transformed carbonaceous sulfur hydride system, starting from elemental precursors, with a maximum superconducting transition temperature of 287.7 ± 1.2 kelvin (about 15 degrees Celsius) achieved at 267 ± 10 gigapascals.” … “The superconducting state is observed over a broad pressure range in the diamond anvil cell, from 140 to 275 gigapascals, …”
Note — Atmospheric pressure, also known as barometric pressure (after the barometer), is the pressure within the atmosphere of Earth.The standard atmosphere (symbol: atm) is a unit of pressure defined as 101,325 Pascals (wiki).
Also note “Both H2S and CH4 readily mix with hydrogen to form guest–host structures at lower pressures7, and are of comparable size at 4 gigapascals. By introducing methane at low pressures into the H2S + H2 precursor mixture for H3S,…
So we are looking at cable pressures that are just under a million time atmospheric pressure, that needs to be temperature stabilized to within strict limits (both upper and lower). Add to this the requirement to manufacture long lengths of a durable cabling material with what sounds to be quite fragile and unpleasant substances — bad-egg gas mixed with methane (H2S and CH4 ).
It all sounds like a bit of a premature announcement — unless they are touting for more funding.
I very much doubt that this discovery will be used on any major electrical grid lines in my lifetime.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi TomO,
Between 1969-1971 I was a post-doc at Cornell University doing the experimental work measuring the magnetic properties of mixed rare-earth hexaboride systems down to pumped He temperature (about 1K). Clearly the professor having a grant to explore this system was hopefully trying to find a new system of super-conductors. For one clearly does not know what will be found until one looks.
And it is important to report the results of such experiments so someone else will not waste time, money, and effort doing what I very carefully had done. I am not sure, if some scientists even, understand why this must be done to discover new ‘things’. But for me this type of research, which some professors considered I was good at, was not practically full filling as my career objective had always been to become a teacher of physical science. So, I sought and accepted a position teaching middle school and high school students in a small public school system.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Tom O
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Good Points, Jerry. There is no sense in people driving down a dead end street if by reading someone else’s experience you can avoid it.
The problem with the article is that it is written and interpreted by someone other than those involved in the experiment. There is no way of knowing if the “scientists” involved made any comments regarding the parts of the article that are so sensational. Actually, I would hardly believe a scientist would make any comment that what they are working on could “revolutionize” the electric grid. That they might find a way to work them into supercomputers or something like that, I could believe. The author of the article, I suspect, tried to add “excitement” to something that, to be honest, would be down right boring at this stage of development.
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tom0mason
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Hi Jerry,
I have absolutely no problem with research for the new and novel materials and techniques even when it fails. Understanding failure is a good learning platform to better understand what is needed to succeed.
Where I have problems is when raw research is imaginatively extrapolated out to some device when so much has yet to be investigated and fully understood about the basic parameter of its operation, and if it can be cost effectively manufactured.
I’m sure that given the potential of this new superconductor niche, or maybe mainstream products could use it. However as things are described here and in the Nature document I very much doubt that electrical grid connections will be its initial use. IMO cables for electrical grids are not a simple as they at first look — weight, durability, flexibility, ease of maintenance and repair, etc.
I wish these researchers and any manufacturers of this technology well in their endeavors.
What could be a better options for development are improved Torus ring magnets, better Maglev trains, and Superconducting Motors (see https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=949 ) that offer better efficiency and high power to weight ratio. If the technology can be miniaturized then who knows where it could turn up — vehicles, domestic appliances, PCs, and phones?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi TomO,
Who will (can) disagree with what you just wrote. Not I. I was even able understand your concluding sarcasm.
Now during the night I had break through thought which I must share less it be forgotten. I had started writing about the Antarctic ozone hole and was trying to write at a very elementary level that a person without a background in science might be able to follow. And from the beginning I planned this would involve a series of essays because John O’ has always advised me to keep my essays brief and simple because he considered that most readers, who come to PSI, come to learn about the science they do not know. Hence, PSI is a unique scientific blog-site because most postings never generate hundreds of comments within a day or two as other scientific blog-sites do. For it’s reader’s are here to learn and not here to add to the knowledge as I am, and perhaps you are because you do understand some science.
Which possible understanding, John and the other founders of PSI in 2012, knew, had no public forum . So they created one and it is thankfully still here. And I have written an essay for which John ad editor change the title to: Dr Jerry L Krause: How Stupid Am I? Now if one Googles this with the added word-science- you will find the link to this article.
Now as I began this elementary article about the ozone hole, I discovered how stupid I have really been.as overlooked that which has been clearly seen and reported for us to see.
For example: in Newton’s rules of reasoning, he wrote (as translated to English by Motte). in Rule II: Therefore to the natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.” And he gave this example: “the light of culinary fire and of the sun”.
When have you last read about the ultraviolet catastrophy? (SP?)
Have a good day, Jerry
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Shawn Marshall
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Fail safe modular nukes at the load centers is much more feasible and practical (almost) today. Super conductor research may yield some benefits someday – who knows – but power line losses probably are not the pragmatic target.
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Andy Rowlands
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While as some have noted above, this kind of reseatch is good and might one day have some as yet unknown technological benefit, having superconductors at room temperature is something I rather doubt will appear in my lifetime, or in the forseable future.
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