Posted on 09/09/2011 3:25:23 AM PDT by Jonty30
This could change everything you know about electrical power or computers.
cool.
“The new wire has the potential to push the price of renewable energy down by making it more economical to transmit electricity over long distances.”
Wanna bet our bills won’t go down?
Maybe not, but it could result in your cellphone being able to stay charged for a week or those football field -sized rooms that super computers tend to take up could possibly be reduced to something much more manageable.
Or those electric vehicles could be finally driven a decent distance with the air conditioning on. :)
How come this wasn't developed at the Universities in Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Gaza, or at a University in the West Bank?
Is it me, or am I just sarcastic :-)...
And think of what would be lost if Israel ever lost a major war. :(
Any wire that has to be cooled with liquid nitrogen isn’t likely to be used for long distance power transmission lines... That presents a few major problems of its own...
It sounds like to me, from the article, it was really developed in the US, that is the actual super conducting material. That Israel just added the cooling.
I think I see a potential problem.
>>> The TAU research team took the project a step farther by combining the fibers with a self-contained cooling system based on liquid nitrogen, which keeps the sapphire wire in a highly efficient superconducting state without overheating. <<<
And if the “cooling system” gets damaged, what then?
Unlikely. Barely mentioned in the article is that these things are only superconducting at cryogenic temperatures. So unless you carry your cellphone in a flask of liquid nitrogen or your electric vehicle is going to carry around a large tank of liquid nitrogen (or a power intensive system to make liquid nitrogen on the spot) there won't be any benefit to using this material in electric vehicles. The supercomputers maybe.
Nitrogen has become so cheap to produce that you can generally waste it.
A generation ago, it used to cost hundreds of dollars for a litre. 10 years ago, you could buy a litre for about 5 bucks.
Now it’s just a few pennies.
Just imagine what the backup cooling system would have to look like, not to mention the power it would take.
It is like a cartoon I saw many years ago. Three “researchers were standing inside some lab admiring something on one’s wrist. They were amazed at the worlds smallest TV that one had produced. The caption at the bottom was
Gee, that is wonderful, but how do you change the channels?
Let’s see what the cost is. It isn’t the first time that superconducting technology has been proposed for use in the power grid, and it’s not clear what this sapphire wire brings to the table that older technologies didn’t. Many things are practicable that aren’t practical.
Something would have to watch the system temperatures and shut it off if temperatures neared the failure point.
Very cool. As in needing to be kept at liquid nitrogen temperature in order to work. Not sure how suitable for long-distance transmission it will be.
Must have been before the era of cheap electronic watches that had four or more buttons on the bezel.
“it could result in your cellphone being able to stay charged for a week”
Mine holds a charge for a week with only a couple of short calls a day use but I get your point.
Wanna bet our bills won’t go down?
You mean like a heated pipeline from Alaska?
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