Energy-efficiency in the inductive heating of forging billets

The continuously increasing importance of the CO2 balance and of conserving resources is resulting in ever greater demands for high energy-efficiency in the process used for heating forging billets. Plant and process engineering play roles of parallel significance in the fulfillment of these requirements, and this article focuses on both to an equal degree. The shares of the individual components in the overall energy consumption of an induction heating installation are therefore firstly determined before their respective potentials for optimization are discussed. The quality of the heating process itself and its optimum design for reducing energy consumption are then examined.