From fridge magnets to hard drives, magnets occupy an important place in our daily lives, but their usefulness is far greater when it comes to physics and materials development. A group of engineers at Florida State University recently created the world's most powerful resistive magnet, with a magnetic flux density reaching 41.4 teslas. That places it 7.5 percent above its direct competitor, and very close to hybrid designs, which are more complex and expensive.
Some magnets on the market are so powerful that they need to be handled with great care. A quick search on YouTube will show you their strength, especially those made with neodymium alloy. However, the magnet developed by Florida State University goes much further. A permanent neodymium magnet typically has a magnetic flux density of about 1.3 teslas. In contrast, the engineers at the National MagLab within the university created a 41.4-tesla resistive magnet, the most powerful of its kind on the planet. Considering that going from 1 tesla to 10 teslas requires a hundred times more energy, this is an impressive achievement.
And speaking of energy, this new magnet is a real beast. It requires 32 megawatts of direct current and a liquid cooling system that circulates more than 16,000 liters of water per minute. MagLab held the world record for magnetic flux density in resistive magnets for 19 years, until a development in Hefei, China, took it away in 2014 with a 38.5-tesla magnet. Thanks to this brand-new magnet, officially named “Project 11”, the lab managed to reclaim the record. Of course, it wasn't easy: it took two and a half years of work, backed by an investment of $3.5 million.
Technically, Project 11 is not the most powerful magnet in general. Looking back at its history, MagLab also created a 45-tesla hybrid magnet, combining an 11.5 T superconducting unit with a 33.5 T resistive one. Still, this gives the scientific community access to a much more robust tool, benefiting a wide range of disciplines.
