International Technology Award of Hannover Messe

Aluminium profiles for window frames, brass products for the house building and automotive industry as well as heat exchangers or heating tubes of copper – they have all one thing in common during production: the metal billets of which the components are to be made, must be softened before the processing, ie. they have to be heated up to a temperature of 1 100 °C. It is particularly energy efficient to use the new induction heater, which has been developed by the machine building company Bültmann GmbH (Neuenrade) in cooperation with the company Zenergy Power GmbH (formerly Trithor GmbH, Rheinbach).

Due to the superconductor technology a prototype achieves at the heating efficiency an efficiency of 80 percent. Conventional technique achieves less than 60 percent so that increasingly energy is lost as waste heat. The principle of the new technique consists of generating a magnetic field in direct current operation by the so-called high temperature superconductors (HTS) moving the metal billet by means of a motor and then it is induction-heated. Besides the energy efficiency the new technique generates an homogeneous heat distribution in the metal that local overheatings are avoided. These advantages convinced also the jury of the Hermes-Awards: In April 2008 they conferred the technology award worldwide with the hightest endowment to the involved companies. Also the step from the prototype to an application has been accomplished. The new technology is already used on an extrusion press of an industrial partner.

In general high temperature superconductors is the “key 21st century technology”. Already in 2007 the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU) arranged an international conference about this issue. Because of the big success another conference of the DBU „High temperature superconductors in supply services 2010+ - Papers (lectures) about network stability and efficiency“will take place in March 2009.

Metal billet heating by high temperature superconductor technology: the superconductors are caracterised by loosing its electrical resistance already at less low temperatures than the conventional ones.