Design, building and testing of a 10 kW superconducting induction heater

Conventional 50/60 Hz induction heaters for aluminum billets have very large losses. By replacing the copper windings with windings of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes, there is a substantial potential for efficiency improvements, especially if low AC loss HTS tapes become available. To examine the feasibility of using HTS in induction heaters, a first, small-scale working model has been designed and built. The induction coil is made of 24 double pancake coils of Bi-2223/Ag tapes. In the initial test, a workpiece of aluminum situated in the warm bore of the coil was heated up to 300/spl deg/C.