Real World High-Temperature Superconductor Engine

wes33 writes "An amazing technological achievement deploying high-temperature superconductors is reported in Space Daily. American Superconductor Corporation (nice scifi-ish name) has built a 5MW electric ship motor using high-temp. superconductor technology. The Queen Elizabeth's 44 MW engines weigh 400 tons each (and she has two); a single comparable HST motor (36.5 MW) will weigh 75 tons!"

Comments

Re:disappointing article...

[tmacc]

http://www.amsuper.com/products/htsWire/ Here is a link that has some good specs on the wire they use.

Generators aren't critical... yet.

[Engineer-Poet]

The Navy doesn't like diesels because they're too noisy for vehicles which chase submarines. The alternative is a gas turbine, which spins fast enough that you can make an acceptably small and light alternator without going to extreme materials; only when you need to drive a low-speed propellor do you really need the high-current capabilities of superconductors.

The technical explanation is that you can transfer a lot of power with a small, rapidly-varying magnetic field (like the itty-bitty toroid in your computer's power supply, running at 100 KHz instead of the 60 Hz power line frequency), but to transfer the same amount of power with a slowly-varying field needs a much bigger field, bigger currents and bigger losses. Superconductors get rid of the losses and can sustain bigger fields in a smaller package.