Superconducting coils for contactless power transmission

摘要

Technical University of Munich (TUM) physicists Christoph Utschick and Prof. Rudolf Gross, have made a coil with superconducting wires capable of contactless transmitting power. Although widely used in charging small devices, there is now a growing interest in contactless charging for larger electric machines. These types of devices could be placed on a charging station whenever they are not in use. Current transmission systems for high performance recharging in the kilowatt range and above, however, are based on copper coils which are large and heavy. Working with Wurth Elektronik and superconductor coating specialist Theva Dunnschichttechnik, the TUM team have created a coil with superconducting wires capable of contactless power transmission in the order of more than five kW and without significant loss. Minor alternating current losses can occur in superconducting transmission coils and these losses grow as transmission performance increases - the surface temperature of the superconducting wires rises and the superconduction then collapses. To address this, the researchers developed a special coil design in which the individual windings of the coil are separated from one another by spacers.