It is a rare privilege to be on the verge of something quite new in the Scientific world. In the field of magnetism there is a specialised area that up to now has only been of interest to palaeologists who study rocks, where certain features of magnetism allow them to determine their age and the Earth’s magnetism at that early time. The significant feature of interest is the science behind how remanent magnetism decays with time, since this is fundamental to extrapolating from measurements taken now to the magnetism that existed thousands of years ago. Not surprisingly this remote corner of science is not of interest to experts in the use of magnetism for delivering electrical or mechanical energy, i.e. electrical generators, motors, and transformers. Those experts are familiar with remanent magnetism since it influences the efficiency of their devices, but it is labelled as “permanent magnetism”. That so-called “permanent magnetism” decays over a time span of many years is of interest where permanent magnets are used in generators and motors since the requirement there is to have magnets that last. Emphasis over the years has been on materials that maximise both the magnitude and life span of remanent magnetism. For so-called magnetically-soft ferromagnetic materials the “permanent” nature of some remanent magnetism is accepted, but generally with alternating currents it gets swept away so its only effect is to create hysteresis leading to core loss; although it cannot be eliminated ferromagnetic materials have been developed where remanence is minimised. There has been no interest in developing ferromagnetic materials where, after the magnetizing influence is removed, the remanence decays swiftly, then using that decay for some useful purpose. There are no accounts of experiments where this has been accomplished. There is no history, no theoretical analyses, no mathematics for this type of experiment to fall back on.
But recently the South Korean SEMP Research Institute claim to have obtained a decay time constant measured in milliseconds in specially heat-treated pure iron, and they have demonstrated equipment that use this effect. I have opened this thread for the purposes of exploring this new territory, and I start with a paper that deals with the theory to show that it offers a new method for converting thermal energy directly into electrical energy. We are used to heat pumps having COPs greater than unity, and this technique offers something similar but the output being electrical is far more useful than that of a heat pump.
My paper here makes no attempt to describe a practical embodiment, this is purely theoretical in order to show its COP potential and to garner interest in pursuing this work.
Smudge
|