Pilot Plant for Manufacture of High-temperature Superconductors Goes on Stream

Deutsche Nanoschicht GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of BASF New Business GmbH, is opening its new pilot plant for the manufacture of high temperature superconductors. The facility located in Rheinbach is based on an in-house developed chemical manufacturing process and has a fifty times higher capacity than the company laboratory plant used to date. The pilot plant is an important step on the way to market launch of the superconductors. BASF New Business provides customers with samples of the wire manufactured in the new plant to produce prototypes for innovative, high-efficiency applications in power grids. Primary examples are current limiters and cables for direct and alternating current.

Compared to conventional cables, superconducting cables can transmit current with negligible loss and therefore much more efficiently, and can transport a much greater amount of energy in relation to the conductor cross-section. High-temperature super-conductors already conduct current at the temperature of liquid nitrogen (77 Kelvin / minus 196 degrees Celsius) without resistance.

This temperature can be achieved reliably and cost-effectively and maintained during operation by commercial refrigerating machines. The ten to one hundred times higher current-carrying capacity compared to copper allows very compact new cable applications and more lightweight systems for generators and motors. Current limiters compensate current peaks in public or industrial supply grids and can thereby prevent power failures caused by short circuits.

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