Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Superconductivity And The Environment - A Roadmap

A rather interesting and unusual review article. It describes how superconductivity and superconductors can actually help in improving our environment. As stated in this PhysicsWorld blog, it is an unusual assertion because "... superconductors only work at very low temperatures and lots of energy is needed to cool them.. "

Still, you might want to check out the list of things that have been argued that superconductors can do to help with the environment. The review paper is available for free.

Zz.

1 comment:

DrCooley said...

While it is true that refrigeration consumes quite a bit of energy, the payback can be much more than the cost. Example - right now, the largest wind turbine is about 2 MW, limited by the generator mass on top of the tower. For a few tens of kW cooling, this could be increased to 6 MW and perhaps 20 MW in the future. See http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/wind/superconductors-for-whopping-wind-turbines