Superconductor bearings, flywheels and transportation

This paper describes the present status of high temperature superconductors (HTS) and of bulk superconducting magnet devices, their use in bearings, in flywheel energy storage systems (FESS) and linear transport magnetic levitation (Maglev) systems. We report and review the concepts of multi-seeded REBCO bulk superconductor fabrication. The multi-grain bulks increase the averaged trapped magnetic flux density up to 40% compared to single-grain assembly in large-scale applications. HTS magnetic bearings with permanent magnet (PM) excitation were studied and scaled up to maximum forces of 10 kN axially and 4.5 kN radially. We examine the technology of the high-gradient magnetic bearing concept and verify it experimentally. A large HTS bearing is tested for stabilizing a 600 kg rotor of a 5 kWh/250 kW flywheel system. The flywheel rotor tests show the requirement for additional damping. Our compact flywheel system is compared with similar HTS–FESS projects. A small-scale compact YBCO bearing with in situ Stirling cryocooler is constructed and investigated for mobile applications. Next we show a successfully developed modular linear Maglev system for magnetic train operation. Each module levitates 0.25t at 10 mm distance during one-day operation without refilling LN₂. More than 30 vacuum cryostats containing multi-seeded YBCO blocks are fabricated and are tested now in Germany, China and Brazil.