engineers at florida state university (tallahassee) have set a new world record in the national maglab by pushing the resistive magnet to 41.4 teslas, which is eight percent better than the previous record, as part of the its project 11.
magnet designer jack toth works on installing the coils in the housing. (stephen bilenky/florida state university)
according to a report from the university, “that extra oomph allowed the lab’s new magnet, fueled by 32 megawatts of dc (direct current) power, to leapfrog over the previous record-holders, a 38.5-tesla resistive magnet in hefei, china, and a 37.5-tesla resistive magnet in nijmegen, the netherlands.”
this magnet is easier for scientists to control, allowing more flexibility in adjusting the field and polarity during experiments, according to the report.
in order to reach the new record, engineers at florida state used parts from other magnets at the lab to build it and introduced liquid cooling to its thyristor-based rectifiers and transistor-based active filters, according to an article from power electronics.
“power goes through reversing switches, into air-cooled aluminum bus bars that run the length of the building with disconnect switches to each of 16 magnet cells,” the article added. “cells have water-cooled flexible copper cables that are connected to the magnets.”
it continued, “there are two supply circuits for the magnet cooling water with a common return. there are five pumps—two on each circuit, plus one that is valved into either circuit. the magnets are cooled with deionized water with resistivity of 10 m?-cm. the magnet cooling water runs through a heat exchanger to a chilled water loop that has ~4mgal of storage at ~6°c. the chilled water is maintained by chillers that dump their heat to a third loop that runs to cooling towers.”
hybrid resistive magnets of this kind are used by scientists to study material properties.
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