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From: mwtilden@orchid.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Superconducting Energy Storage
Message-ID: <7766@orchid.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24-May-87 23:33:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: orchid.7766
Posted: Sun May 24 23:33:48 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 25-May-87 04:38:33 EDT
References: <226@ndmath.UUCP>
Reply-To: mwtilden@orchid.UUCP (M.W. Tilden, Hardware)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 69

In article <226@ndmath.UUCP> milo@ndmath.UUCP (Greg Corson) writes:
>How much energy could you store in a superconductive device roughly the
>size of a Lantern Battery?  (ie: how many amp/hours or KWatt hours) 
>

Hmmmm.  Of course the initial question would be just what sort of 
energy storing devices would become super efficient under 
superconductor technology.  Let's assume for the moment that
we have the following to work with:

- ambient temperature (or better) SC wire with copper type flexibility
  capable of carrying the maxi-megaampheres of sci-fi dreams.

- An ideal ferrite-core substance to allow for concentrated, directed
  magnetic core windings.  This should do much to reduce the size
  of our storage device so that concentrated magnetic fields
  can exist in an atmostphere without ionizing the gas and loosing
  energy.

- Finally, something just as difficult to conceive, a perfect insulator
  of infinite thinness so that coils can be tightly compact and 
  capacitors have a perfect dialectric seperator.

With these assumptions a device immediately comes to mind: a  
Tank Oscillator.

This circuit is a classic in electronic theory.  It is composed
of hooking a capacitor and a coil in parallel.  Charge in the capacitor
discharges into the coil producing a magnetic field.  When the 
charge is depleted the current flow stops and the magnetic field collapses
back onto the coil producing a back electro-motive force (EMF) which charges
the capacitor and the cycle repeats.  The current flow is a perfect 
sinusoidal voltage/current curve.  Inherant losses in the coil efficiency and 
the connecting wire usually slow this process to a stop. 

A device of this type made with superconductors would be both 
useful, small and explosive.  Properly designed it would be the 
perfect AC battery.  Plug it into the wall (through a resistor
so you don't blow every fuse in the house) and it would charge to the 
optimal electron density possible ( Anybody got any figures for this?
how many electorns can be comfortably stuffed into a battery-sized 
volume before saturation occurs?). I'm guessing that such a battery would
be capable of delivering a 1 amp @ 120 VAC for about 10 minutes, making it
around .72 Kwatt/hours. 

Of course there are some major problems to be considered.  The shelf
life of such a device would be in severe question not to mention internal
voltage stability.  And if the battery was damaged when it contained a full
charge, I think there would be a lot of scorched earth in the immediate 
vicinity.

Anyway, it's worth thinking about.

So the question is, what other devices could support such a charge
reliably and secondly, does anybody have any information
on how close such a device is to reality?  I know that the current 
hit-and-miss work going on with ceramic superconductors has yet to 
get even a proper defining theory to explain the effect, and
that current densities have yet to exceed the microamp range.

So how about it?  Let's get some talk going.



-- 
Mark Tilden: _-_-_-__--__--_      /(glitch!)  M.F.C.F Hardware Design Lab.
-_-___       |              \  /\/            Un. of Waterloo. Canada, N2L-3G1  
     |__-_-_-|               \/               work: (519)-885-1211 ext.2457,
"MY OPINIONS, YOU HEAR!? MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! AH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"