Preliminary Design of the Magplane MagPipe System

A novel capsule pipeline transportation system using a linear synchronous motor, called Magplane MagPipe, is under development with the intention to replace trucks and railways for hauling materials from the mine to the rail head, power plant or processing plant with reduced operating cost and energy consumption. The initial demonstration of a MagPipe line in Inner Mongolia will be a 500 meter long doublepipe coal transport system with the design transportation capacity of 3 Mega-tonnes per year. The pipeline consists of 6 meter long plastic pipe modules with an I-beam suspension system inside the pipe to carry sets of five coupled capsules. The pipe will also contain non-continuous motor winding modules spaced at 50 meter intervals. A set of Halbach-arrayed permanent magnets on the bottom of the capsules interact with the linear motor windings to provide propulsion. The motor is driven by variable frequency drives outside the pipe to control the speed. This paper describes the preliminary design results of MagPipe system.