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Silver is Key to Breakthrough in Superconductivity - Silver
Demand to Increase Substantially as Technology Expands
June 12, 2001


WASHINGTON, D.C. - For the first time in the 100-year history of consumer electric
power transmission, superconducting electric power cables are being installed to serve
the public. The cables, which rely on protective sheathing made of silver for
transmission of electricity without loss of current to resistance, will serve an inner-city
section of Detroit, Michigan.

Superconductivity will be a critical component in the power grids of the future. Because
they carry more electricity in a smaller space, without loss to resistance, and because are
more reliable, superconducting cables are already being looked at as a means of avoiding
the blackouts and brownouts caused by power shortages in California.

The three, four-hundred-foot cables installed in Detroit were manufactured by Pirelli
Cables and Systems of Milan, Italy. The superconducting wires used in the cables were
manufactured by American Superconductor, Inc., of Westborough, Massachusetts. The
wires are sheathed in silver, which makes up more than 50 percent of the weight of the
wires, and is critical to their superconducting properties.

The project was developed by Pirelli Cables and Systems; American Superconductor;
Detroit Edison, of Detroit, Michigan; and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI),
of Palo Alto, California. The cost of the project was partially underwritten by the U.S.
Department of Energy`s Superconductivity Partnership Initiative (SPI). A full description
of the project, along with related links, can be found on the Internet at
http://www.detroitedison.com/htscable/index.html.

"This is only the first installment in a significant new market for silver," said Paul
Bateman, Executive Director of the Silver Institute. "When fully realized in the next
decade or so, the superconducting wire market has the potential to consume 50 million
ounces of silver or more every year."

Currently, American Superconductor manufactures 500 kilometers of superconducting
wire per year. When a new production plant located at Devens, Massachusetts, comes
fully on line in 2002, they expect this figure to increase to 10,000 kilometers per year,
and within five years as high as 20,000 kilometers per year. This will represent a 40-fold
increase over current demand. At that level, in the Devens plant alone, the manufacture
of HTS wire will consume roughly 5 million ounces of silver every year.

Silver is critical to the process because the superconducting material at the core of the
cable is a ceramic compound - made of bismuth, strontium, calcium, copper, and
oxygen (BSCCO 2223) - which is by nature very brittle. This ceramic material is
encased in silver, then drawn out to a thin wire. The silver sheathing provides a
protective barrier, while allowing oxygen to diffuse through to the ceramic core. Silver is
also chemically benign to the ceramic. Currently there are no known substitutes for
silver in this process, and it is the major raw material in production.

First discovered in 1911, superconductivity allows certain materials under certain
conditions - including a temperature of minus 452 degrees Fahrenheit - to conduct
electricity without losing current to resistance. Over the next several decades, the search
was on for a process that would allow superconductivity to occur at higher, more easily
attainable, temperatures. In 1986, researchers at IBM discovered that using ceramics
sheathed with silver enabled superconductivity to occur at dramatically higher
temperatures.

These high-temperature superconducting wires, or HTS wires, now operate at minus
321 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature high enough to use liquid nitrogen as a coolant.
This is important because liquid nitrogen is plentiful, inexpensive, and inert.

The HTS cables installed under the seventy-year-old Frisbie Power Station in downtown
Detroit are HTS wires wrapped around a core of circulating liquid nitrogen that keeps the
temperature cold enough for superconductivity to occur. The copper electric cables in
use for decades lose significant amounts of energy to resistance. The superconducting
cables are able to carry much more power in a much smaller space.

The HTS cables use up one-fourth the space of the copper cables they are replacing, yet
carry more electricity. The HTS wire in the three cables installed in Detroit weighs only
900 pounds, yet replaces 25,000 pounds of copper contained in nine conventional cables.
This reduced demand for space will be key to the success of the cables in inner-city
areas, where space is at a premium and concerns about disruption of streets and
buildings will make using existing space critical.

The silver-reliant HTS cables will be most important in two applications: interconnections
in large transmission facilities, where there is a need to increase capacity and reliability;
and in retrofitting transmission and distribution lines in urban areas where there is a need
to increase capacity in a confined area. As production of the HTS cables increases, and
new technologies and economies of scale drive costs down, more widespread
applicability is anticipated.

American Superconductor is only one of several firms developing HTS wires based on
silver-sheathed ceramic compound BSCCO 2223. Others include Nordic Superconductor
Technologies (NST) in Denmark, Vacuumschmelze GmbH & Co. KG (VAC ) in
Germany, and Sumimoto Co. in Japan. Numerous other companies are developing
applications for this technology, which represents only one of the many promising
applications for increased silver demand in superconductivity.

The Silver Institute is an international industry association of silver mining companies,
refiners, fabricators, bankers, and wholesalers of silver and silver products.



For Further Information Contact:

Doug Fuller
The Silver Institute
1112 16th Street, N.W., Suite 240
Washington, D.C. 20036
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]





1112 16th Street, NW
Suite 240
Washington DC 20036
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

[keepitshort]

Silber als Ummantelung bei Supraleitern
wurde schon mal in diesem Thread angesprochen

http://www.wallstreet-online.de/ws/community/board/thread.ph…

[SellAll]

Zu diesem Thema wurde hier vor kurzem einiges gesagt, es ging da primär um Überland-Leitungen, wo der Einsatz dieser Technik zunächst mal absolut illusorisch ist.
Der o.a. Artikel bezieht sich jedoch auf den Einsatz in kurzen Strecken, unterirdisch, hier um Kabellängen von 122m. Dort scheint eher ein Potential zu liegen, es soll uns ja nur recht sein.
Auf eine technische Problematik der ganzen Technik sei trotzdem hingewiesen:
Wenn die "Sprung"- Temperatur von minus 196 Grad auch nur an einer Stelle überschritten wird, so bricht die Supraleitung voll zusammen, und der gewaltige Strom belastet dann das enthaltene Silber so stark, dass es (nach meinem Verständnis) schlagartig verdampft, und die ganze Chose damit in die Luft fliegt.
MfG
SellAll

[alterhaase]

is ja wie im film, eh