A pulsed superconducting magnet for a static magnetic refrigerator operating between 1.8 K and 4.5 K

Superfluid helium is increasingly used as a technical cooling medium in large-scale research projects involving high-field superconducting magnets, such as the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For refrigeration cycles operating below the normal boiling point of helium, a potentially interesting alternative to vapour compression is magnetic refrigeration, pioneered decades ago. In the framework of development for an industrial-size 1.8 K magnetic refrigerator using a static active material, we have designed, built and tested a pulsed superconducting magnet producing up to 3 T at a ramping rate of 6.5 T/s. The solenoid-type coil, wound with low-loss superconducting wire (small-filament NbTi in a composite Cu/Cu-Ni matrix), is internally cooled by normal boiling helium, and installed inside a toroidal yoke, made of tapered laminations of commercially pure iron. After describing design and construction of the magnet, we present test results and measurements of performance, field quality and pulsed-operation losses.