Silver Facts: Silver in Industry
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Electric power drives the world's industry; its distribution depends upon silver contacts in switches and circuit breakers for efficient control. Silver is used in switches from 3 volts at less than 1 ampere to massive switches and circuit breakers which make and break 500,000 volts at 15,000 amperes. In the latter contacts, the silver is combined with tungsten, molybdenum, or other refractory metals.
Silver contacts in membrane switch panels are now standard in control panels for machinery, chemical industry processes, railway traffic controls and elevator call buttons, to name a few.
Silver oxide / zinc batteries, which have twice the electrical capacity of lead-acid batteries of the same size, have long found extensive use by television crews carrying portable battery packs, in aircraft, and in submersibles where weight is critical. Silver has long been known for its unrivaled performance at high temperatures; it is the only battery, for instance, that can provide reliable power for instrumentation at the high temperatures found at the bottom of oil wells.
Radiography, the use of photographic film to record the internal condition of materials, including stainless steel castings, is the major non-destructive evaluation technique for the discovery of structural fatigue and flaws.
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