An Electromechanical Capacitor for Energy Transfer
Abstract
Inductive energy transfer between two magnets can be achieved with almost 100% efficiency with a transfer capacitor, However, the bulk and cost will be high, and reliability low if conventional capacitors are used. A homopolar machine, used as a capacitor, will be compact and economical. A homopolar machine was designed with counter-rotating copper disks completely immersed in a liquid metal (NaK-78) to work as a pulse capacitor. Absence of solid-brush collectors minimized wear and frictional losses. Wetting of the copper disks throughout the periphery by the liquid metal minimized the resistive losses at the collector interface. A liquid-metal collector would, however, introduce hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic losses. The selected liquid metal, e.g., NaK-78 will produce the lowest of such losses among the available liquid metals. An electromechanical capacitor of this design was tested at various de magnetic fields. Its measured capacitance was about 100 farads at a de magnetic field of 1.15 tesla.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1983
- Accession Number
- ADA638401
Entities
People
- Jeffrey Marshall
- P. Chowdhuri
- T. A. Carroll
Organizations
- Los Alamos National Laboratory