The influence of the amount of recycled material on microstructure and properties of recycled single-domain YBCO bulks

Novel recycling process based on chemical dissolution was employed to grow REBCO bulks; recycled material obtained by recycling defective YBCO single-domain bulks was added (15 wt.%, 30 wt.% and 45 wt.%) to raw materials to prepare recycled precursor powder. Subsequently, single-domain YBCO bulks were produced using TSMG. Single-domain bulk recycling was chosen, as it represents the most challenging form of waste in the context of REBCO superconductor production. The properties and microstructure of recycled bulks were analyzed in detail. Single-domain YBCO bulks were grown successfully from the recycled precursor powder. Furthermore, it was found that their properties could be tuned by varying the amount of the added recycled powder.This work has demonstrated that up to 30 wt.% of recycled material can be seamlessly incorporated into existing REBCO production processes with only minimal impact and is that even more recycled material can be incorporated as the process matures and scales up.