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Design and Development of Superconducting DC Cable for Railway

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Article  in  IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity · June 2013

DOI: 10.1109/TASC.2013.2251742

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3601504
Design and Development of Superconducting DC
Cable for Railway Applications
M. Tomita, M. Muralidhar, Y. Fukumoto, A. Ishihara, K. Suzuki, Y. Kobayashi, and T. Akasaka
Abstract—We report the recent development in the national
project dealing with a prototype of the next generation dc super-
conducting cable for railways. The main goal of the project is to
upgrade the feeder of the overhead contact line system connecting
the electric train with the substation. The superconducting cables
are usually considered to reduce the resistive losses generated in a
conventional feeding system mainly in the catenary wires. In this
paper, various cable structures existing in the railway network
were studied with respect of their use in the next generation of
railways. The superconducting cables need to be cooled below
77 K. They consist of coaxially configured conductors and sheaths.
Liquid nitrogen is forced to flow through these coaxial cables.
Various designs and configurations of the cooling systems possess
always some advantages and some drawbacks. Our systematic
analysis showed that a ‘go and return’ system, where the liquid
nitrogen flows through the hollow former and returns through the
space between the outer layer of the HTS tapes and the cryostat
wall is most effective for the railway applications; it saves both
space and costs.
Index Terms—Bi-2223, critical current (Ic ), dc HTS cable,
railway systems.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HERE ARE numerous environmental impacts of the cur-
rent transport system, one of the most detrimental being
the CO2 emission. Advanced technologies are demanded to
liberate future generations from this load of green house effect
by reducing CO2 emission. In this direction, the high-Tc super-
conducting (HTS) cables have attracted much attention due to
their specific properties, e.g., high transmission capacity at low
loss, high efficiency, compactness, and electromagnetic shield-
ing [1]–[4]. Moreover, they are actively cooled and thermally
independent of the surrounding environment [5], [6]. Compared
to the conventional copper cables, the superconducting ones can
be fitted into much more compact installations [7], [8]. Such
cables can be used in existing power lines and will be able
to transmit thousands of megawatts of electricity [9], [10]. In
addition, the lighter, thinner, higher-capacity superconducting
cables can be used like normal cables with a proper cryogenic
cladding [11], [12]. In spite of the obvious benefits, this new
Manuscript received October 9, 2012; accepted March 1, 2013. Date of
publication March 12, 2013; date of current version May 15, 2013. This work
was supported in part by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST),
Strategic Promotion of Innovative Research and Development, Government
of Japan, and in part by, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and
Tourism of the Government of Japan.
The authors are with Applied Superconductivity, Materials Technology
Division, Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI), Tokyo 185-8540, Japan
(e-mail: tomita@rtri.or.jp).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2013.2251742
1051-8223/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 23, NO. 3, JUNE 2013
Fig. 1. The structure of the dc feeding and overhead contact line system.
challenging technology requires a detailed experimental inves-
tigation before its safe use in the railway systems. The power
supply of Japan Railway is 1.5 kV dc in the metropolitan
cities of Tokyo and Osaka, as well as in several countries
around the world [13]. In the existing conventional systems the
voltage drop is significant. Due to this, the interval between the
substations lies within 2–3 km distance. Fig. 1 shows the typical
conventional electric dc network structure composed of feeding
sections, feeding points, a catenary line, substations, a rectifier,
and a railway).
The positive terminal of the rectifier is connected to the
catenary and the negative terminal of the rectifier is connected
to the rail. Both the catenary wire and the rail bring the power
to the train and the substations feed the system and maintain
the required system voltage around 1.5 kV [14]. However,
high resistive losses are generated in the feeding network.
If HTS cables were employed in the feeding network, the
voltage decay and thus also the number of substations could
be reduced to minimum [15]. With support from the Japanese
government, we started the first national project to develop a
prototype dc superconducting cable for railway systems. For
this purpose, the HTS cable should be capable of carrying a
current of 5 kA to ensure a voltage of 1.5 kV in a continuous
power transmission line. Our preliminary results indicate that
the current-carrying capacity of the dc superconducting cable
meets all these demands [13]. Numerical models based on the
MATLAB-Simulink were constructed to simulate behavior of
dc electric feeder systems for single and double track railways.
They estimated the energy saving and capacity of substations.
For a single track, five substations for 5 min train operation
interval were assumed and the energy flow for five minutes was
evaluated. A superconducting cable system, the heat load along
the 1 kW/km cable, the heat load at the cable 0.25 kW terminals,
coefficient of performance (COP) of the cooling system of
0.1, and 10 cable terminals were assumed. By introducing the
superconducting cable, the regeneration power increased by
TOMITA et al.: DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SUPERCONDUCTING DC CABLE FOR RAILWAY APPLICATIONS
82 MJ and regeneration rate became by about 7% higher. At
the same time, cooling power of 74 MJ was required. As a
result, the total input power of the substation decreased by
21 MJ per five minutes. In addition, the maximum current
and power of substations decreased. The latter was only 64%
of that of the conventional system without a superconducting
cable. The regeneration rate for the superconducting single
track was higher than that of the conventional double track. The
maximum substation current for the superconducting double
track was smaller than that for the conventional single track.
The results indicated that the introduction of a superconducting
power cable can improve efficiency of a regenerative brake,
to bring system energy savings and considerably reduce the
substation capacity requirements. More details of the numerical
analysis can be found in [15]. This paper will describe the
current progress, including the selection of a suitable design
with respect to the development of dc superconducting cables
for railway applications.
II. E XPERIMENT
For the prototype dc superconducting cable, Ag-sheathed
Bi-2223 superconducting wires were prepared by using the
powder-in-tube (PIT) method with controlled overpressure
(CT-OP) sintering process. In order to improve the mechanical
strength, the critical tensile stress, and the critical bending
diameter, the tapes were laminated with 50 μm-thick sheets
of copper alloy (1wt % Sn). The superconducting wire was
4.5 mm wide and 0.35 mm thick, and the critical current (Ic ) at
77.3 K was ≥ 180 A in average using the 1 μV/cm criterion.
The relative density of the Bi-2223 filaments was measured
by the Archimedes method, where the weight was compared
to that of the ideal mass density (6.3 g/cm3 ). More details of
the preparation of the Bi-2223 tapes can be found in [16]. For
testing the superconducting dc cables, a regulated power sup-
ply 0-10V/0-3600 A, model HX010-3600 (TAKASAGO) was
used. Four regulated power supplies were connected in parallel
to transport more than 10 000 A dc power. I-V measurements
were carried out at liquid nitrogen temperature.
III. S ELECTION OF HTS P OWER C ABLE FOR
R AILWAY A PPLICATIONS
For a practical application of a superconducting cable, it
is necessary to design an effective cooling system. The heat
penetration into superconducting dc feeding system is crucial
and the following four main heat sources have to be considered
for an efficient cable system: (i) heat infiltration from the
vacuum insulation pipe, (ii) heat penetration from the current
lead and current lead terminals, (iii) heat penetration from
the cooling system and (iv) exchange loss due to ripple. The
superconducting cables should be designed and engineered
to reduce the heat penetration. Heat penetration through the
vacuum-insulated piping is mainly due to the small distance
between the concentric inner and outer pipe, due to a poor
vacuum, and the radiant heat penetration from the outer pipe.
This kind of heat penetration in the structure of the coaxial
inner tube and the outer tube can be controlled by using a
3601504
Fig. 2. Schematic concept of cryogenics design (CD) of cable: (a) single core,
(b) a cable is a 2 in-one type, (c) double core, and (d) single core with the
counter flow.
spacer material having a low thermal conductivity such as
Teflon or FRP. The function of the outer tube is to reduce the
contact area between the inner tube and the external ambient.
In order to reduce the radiant heat penetration, we used vacuum
multi-layer insulation (super-insulation (SI)), Aluminum Mylar
sheets in a multi-layer winding up. By applying the above
measures, the dominant vacuum insulated piping heat invasion
was considerably improved.
The radiation heat load depends on the temperature differ-
ence between the concentric surfaces (the corrugated cylinder
pipe and the SI material), their surface areas, their emissivity
and, to a lesser extent, their shape. For a close concentric ge-
ometry, such as the corrugated cylinder envelope, the radiation
heat load, P, can be estimated using the following equation:
σ  
P =   A2 T24 − T14
1
+ A2 1
−1
ε2 A1 ε1
where σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, A1 and A2 are
the areas of the cold and warm surfaces, ε1 and ε2 are the
emissivities of the surfaces and T1 and A2 are the temperatures
of the cold and warm surfaces, respectively. In the equation
all the parameters are constant. A2 is the main parameter
controlling radiation heat load. Cryostat losses per unit length
are approximately 1 to 2 W/m. To reduce A2 and thus the
heat penetration, one can use for most of the areas of railway
applications a straight pipe line instead of a corrugated one.
However, in metropolitan areas, there is not enough free linear
space and as a result one needs to apply a combination of
shorter straight pipes with corrugated pipes to reduce A2 .
Utilization of superconducting power cables in railway tech-
nology requires the adequate knowledge of design satisfying
requirements of the railway applications, like suitability, avail-
ability, low cost and high reliability. Variety of possible cable
structures are shown in Fig. 2. They are single core, 2 in-one
type, double core, and a single core with the counter flow. The
2-in-one type means that two cable cores are housed in a single
cryostat. The two cooling flow paths are common in all types;
the flow direction depends on the type of railway network.
3601504
Fig. 3. A dc feeding system with an overhead contact line, in which a single-
core HTS dc cable bypasses a normal cable.
Fig. 4. A dc feeding system with an overhead contact line in which HTS dc
cables of double core type or two-in-one type bypass the normal feeder cable.
In order to verify the suitability of these newly designed su-
perconducting cables for existing railway systems, we checked
the performance of our cables in the existing railway network.
Fig. 3 gives an example of the schematic distribution of a
conventional feeding network using up and down train lines,
where HTS dc cable is placed parallel to the feeder and con-
nected to the substation. In this case, the HTS dc cable is cooled
by sub-cooled liquid nitrogen. For this purpose, the HTS cable
should be capable of carrying a current of 5 kA to ensure a
voltage of 1.5 kV in a continuous power transmission line. The
cable used is a single core type as shown in Fig. 2(a). In this
case, the superconducting cable has to be cooled inline; the
cryogen, e.g. liquid nitrogen, goes in a loop through the hollow
former and back through the space between the outer layers of
HTS tapes and the cryostat wall. This design needs a long cable,
which means a large quantity of the superconducting wire. In
this design a large quantity of radiation heat also occurs.
The second example of a dc feeding system is in Fig. 4.
The up and down tracks are connected by a double core or a
two-in-one type cable (cf. Fig. 2(c) and Fig. 2(b), respectively).
These cables need separate cooling paths, but they use the same
coolant. This configuration requires not only a large quantity
of superconducting wire, but also a large cable diameter, which
results in high thermal losses due to radiation.
The third example of a dc current feeding system was con-
structed using a single-core HTS cable with a similar overhead
contact line as in Fig. 4. In this case the up and down tracks
were connected by a single-core HTS cable utilizing a counter
flow cooling system. In this design the separate coolant paths
are configured to provide the counter flow system within the
same cryostat, which minimizes cost of the cryostat and reduces
the superconducting wire amount and diameter of the cable.
Our results show that the counter flow design is the most
effective one for the railway system applications. In this config-
uration the vacuum insulation is the shortest of all, indicating a
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 23, NO. 3, JUNE 2013
Fig. 5. Schematic view of a cold dielectric cable design.
significant reduction of heat losses. Our results demonstrate that
for railway applications the counter flow approach is not only an
effective solution for cooling the superconducting cables but it
also brings a substantial reduction of the length of the expensive
superconducting wire. After summarizing the results of analysis
of the various superconducting feeding systems in the existing
railway network we selected CD of a single core type cable,
in which liquid nitrogen flows through the hollow former and
returns through the space between the outer layers of HTS tapes
and the cryostat walls. As only one line is needed in this design,
it saves space, cost and reduces the radiation losses.
IV. C ABLE C ONSTRUCTION
The 5 m long high-Tc superconducting cable was constructed
using the 1st generation HTS tape (Bi-2223) as a superconduc-
tor. For the reasons mentioned above we chose the counter-flow
cooled cable design [12]. The structure of the superconducting
cable with a single core and a cold dielectric is shown in Fig. 5.
The cable is built around a center core of aluminum pipe that
serves as a flow path for the liquid nitrogen (LN) coolant. Three
layers of copper tape and 2 layers of superconducting tapes
wrapped around the core make up the HTS conductor.
The superconducting tapes are then covered with a
polypropylene laminated paper (PPLP), which is used as elec-
trical insulation. The second sheet of the superconducting tape,
consisting of two layers of HTS tape, wound on top of the
dielectric, forms the outer shield layer. Again, 2 layers of copper
tape are wrapped around the shield. Subsequently, the wire is
covered by a core-protective layer of cloth tape and Kraft paper.
Finally, the wire is enclosed in a cryogenic pipe composed of
two concentric stainless steel pipes providing room for vacuum
insulation and support for super-insulation.
V. C RITICAL C URRENT (Ic ) M EASUREMENTS
In our previous work [13], where we reported the properties
of a 2-meter long Bi-2223 cable, we showed current-voltage
measurements of the individual conductor layers. The maxi-
mum current of the inner conductor layer was 1720 A and in the
outer shielding layer the current reached 2430 A at 77 K. The
cable conductor performance even improves with temperature
TOMITA et al.: DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SUPERCONDUCTING DC CABLE FOR RAILWAY APPLICATIONS
lowering or increasing number of layers. In order to get a higher
current capacity in the newly designed 5-meter HTS cable,
2 layers were used for the HTS conductor and shield layers.
The critical current, Ic , measurements were carried out in a
recently made low temperature cryostat. Details of the cryostat
design and construction will be reported elsewhere. The crit-
ical current of the inner conductor layer reached 10.07 kA at
77 K and exceeded 11.79 kA at 73.7 K. However, it was a
limit given by the maximum current of the employed regu-
lated dc power supply and we could not extend our tests to
even lower temperatures. In this design, the nominal Ic of
each superconducting wire at liquid nitrogen temperature was
180 A. Therefore, the total nominal current-carrying capacity
of the conductor layer was around 9.54 kA (2 layers/53 tapes).
This is more than the data reported recently by Gouge et al. for
a 3 m long prototype single-phase dc cable using the second
generation (2G) superconductor wire [17]. The current values
are significantly higher than those in the earlier reports of
Bi-2223 or Y-123 superconducting cables [5], [18], [19], thus
indicating that the used Bi-2223 tape quality is sufficient for
railway applications. The results show that the prototype dc
superconducting cable can be used in a feeder network.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In summary, a variety of superconducting power cable struc-
tures were analyzed in order to verify their suitability for
railway networks. The analysis results indicated that the
counter-flow approach represents the best option for the railway
network, because it is accompanied with the lowest heat load,
it is the most compact design, and utilizes the least amount of
superconducting wire. Eventually, a five meter long prototype
dc superconducting cable was designed, fabricated, and tested.
The critical current (Ic ) measurements revealed that the critical
current of the cable, Ic , is more than 10 kA at 77 K. Tests of
long-length dc cables with lengths ranging between 30 m to
300 m and the development of the vague will be the next goals
for the National Project.
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