Utilization of Electrical

Energy
Instructor : Vinod Wadhwani
Completer Course for AE/JE
Weightage: 3- 5 Marks
Duration : 18-20 Hours
 Chapters
1. Electric Heating
2. Electric Welding
3. Illumination
4. Electroplating
5. Electric Drives and Motors
 Chapter 01: Electric Heating
Heat plays a major role in everyday life. All heating requirements in domestic purposes
such as cooking, room heater, immersion water heaters, and electric toasters and also
in industrial purposes such as welding, melting of metals, tempering, hardening, and
drying can be met easily by electric heating, over the other forms of conventional
heating. Heat and electricity are interchangeable.
Heat also can be produced by passing the current through material to be heated. This
is called electric heating, there are various methods of heating a material but electric
heating is considered far superior compared to the heat produced by coal, oil, and
natural gas.
Advantages of electric heating
• Economical
• Pollution free
• Cleanliness
• Ease of control
• Uniform heating
• High efficiency
• Automatic protection
• Better working conditions
• Less floor area
• High temperature
• Safety
Modes of heat transfer
• The transmission of the heat energy from one body to another
because of the temperature gradient takes place by any of the
following methods:
1. conduction
2. convection
3. radiation
1. conduction

• In this mode, the heat transfers from one part of substance to

another part without the movement in the molecules of substance.
The rate of the conduction of heat along the substance depends upon
the temperature gradient.
Ex: Refractory heating, the heating of insulating materials etc.
[Link]
• In this mode, the heat transfer takes place from one part to another
part of substance or fluid due to the actual motion of the molecules.
The rate of conduction of heat depends mainly on the difference in
the fluid density at different temperatures.
• The mount of heat absorbed by the water from heater through
convection depends mainly upon the temperature of heating element
and also depends partly on the position of the heater.
• Ex: Immersion water heater
[Link]
• In this mode, the heat transfers from source to the substance to be
heated without heating the medium in between. It is dependent on
surface.
• The rate of heat dissipation through radiation is given by Stefan's
Law.
• The radiant heat is proportional to the difference of fourth power of
the temperature, so it is very efficient heating at high temperature.
• Ex: Solar heaters.
Properties of Good Heating Elements
• High Specific Resistance
• High Melting Point
• Lower Temperature coefficient of resistance
• Free From Oxidation
• High Mechanical Strength
• No-Corrosive
• Economical
Materials Used as Heating Elements
• The selection of a material for heating element is depending upon the
service conditions such as maximum operating temperature and the
amount of charge to be heated, but no single element will not satisfy
all the requirements of the heating elements.
• The materials normally used as heating elements are either alloys of
nickel–chromium, nickel–chromium–iron, nickel-chromium-
aluminum, or nickel–copper. Nickel–chromium–iron alloy is cheaper
when compared to simple nickel–chromium alloy. The use of iron in
the alloy reduces the cost of final product but, reduces the life of the
alloy, as it gets oxidized soon.
Different types of alloys for heating elements.
 Methods of Electric Heating
• Heat can be generated by passing the current through a resistance or
induced currents.
• The initiation of an arc between two electrodes also develops heat.
[Link] Heating
• When the electric current is made to pass through a high-resistive
body (or) substance, a power loss takes place in it, which results in
the form of heat energy, i.e., resistance heating is passed upon the
I2R effect.
• When the electric current is made to pass through a high-resistive
body (or) substance, a power loss takes place in it, which results in
the form of heat energy, i.e., resistance heating is passed upon the
I2R effect.
Direct Resistance Heating
• In this method, electrodes are immersed in a material or charge to be
heated. The charge may be in the form of powder, pieces, or liquid.
• The electrodes are connected to AC or DC supply as shown in Fig. In
case of DC or 1-φ AC, two electrodes are immersed and three
electrodes are immersed in the charge and connected to supply in
case of availability of 3-φsupply.
• The current flows through the charge and heat is produced in the
charge itself. So, this method has high efficiency. As the current in this
case is not variable, so that automatic temperature control is not
possible.
• This method of heating is employed in salt bath furnace, electrode
boiler for heating water and arc welding.
[Link] Resistance Heating
• In this method, the electric current is made to pass through a wire or
high-resistance heating element, the heat so developed is transferred
to charge from the heating element by conduction, convection or
radiation.
• This method of heating is employed in immersion water heaters,
room heaters and resistance ovens.
[Link] Heating
• In this method of heating, the heat transfer takes place from the
source to the body to be heated through radiation, for low and
medium temperature applications. Whereas in resistance ovens, the
heat transfers to the charge partly by convection and partly by
radiation.
• In the radiant heating, the heating element consists of tungsten
filament lamps together with reflector and to direct all the heat on
the charge.
• The radiant heating is mainly used for drying enamel , painted
surfaces and drying clothes.
TEMPERATURE CONTROL OF RESISTANCE
HEATING
• 1. Changing the resistance of elements.
• 2. Changing the applied voltage to the elements (or) current passing
through the elements.
• 3. Changing the ratio of the on-and-off times of the supply.
Arc Heating
• If the high voltage is applied across an air gap, the air in the gap gets
ionized under the influence of electrostatic forces and becomes
conducting medium, current flows in the form of a continuous spark,
known as arc.
• A very high voltage is required to establish an arc but very small
voltage is sufficient to maintain it, across the air gap.
• The high voltage required for striking an arc can be obtained by using
a step-up transformer fed from a variable AC supply.
• Another method of striking the arc by using low voltage is by short
circuiting the two electrodes momentarily and with drawing them
back.
• Normally used electrodes in the arc furnaces are carbon electrodes,
graphite electrodes, and selfbaking electrodes.
[Link] Arc Heating
• When supply is given to the electrodes, two arcs are established and
current passes through the charge, as shown in Fig. 4.5. As the arc is
in direct contact with the charge and heat is also produced by current
flowing through the charge itself, it is known as direct arc furnace.
• If the available supply is DC or 1-φ, AC, two electrodes are sufficient,
if the supply is 3-φ, AC, three electrodes are placed at three vertices
of an equilateral triangle.
• The most important feature of the direct arc furnace is that the
current flows through the charge.
• such furnace is used for manufacturing alloy steel and gives purer
product.
• the power factor of arc furnace is 0.8 lagging.
• For 1-ton furnace, the power required is about 200 kW and the
energy consumed is 1.0 MWh/ton.
[Link] Arc Heating
• In indirect arc furnace, the arc strikes between two electrodes by
bringing momentarily in contact and then with drawing them heat so
developed, due to the striking of arc across air gap is transferred to
charge is purely by radiation. A simple indirect arc furnace is shown in
Fig.
• These furnaces are usually l-φ and hence their size is limited by the
amount of one-phase load which can be taken from one point.
• the main application of this furnace is the melting of non-ferrous
metals.
High Frequency Heating
• The main difference between the power-frequency and the high-
frequency heating is that in the conventional methods, the heat is
transferred either by conduction convection or by radiation.
• but in the high-frequency heating methods, the electromagnetic
energy converted into the heat energy inside the material.
Principle of High frequency heating
• The material which we want to heat is located like a piece among two
metallic electrodes where high-frequency voltage is applied so that a
sufficient amount of heating, as well as enough loss, will be provided.
• The frequency range used in this heating ranges from 10 MHz to 20
MHz. The range of voltage changes from 10 – 20 kV. The required
high-frequency voltage supply can be obtained using a valve
oscillator.
Types of High frequency Heating
• The high-frequency heating can be applied to two types of
• 1. Induction heating
• [Link] heating.
[Link] Heating
• The induction heating process makes use of the eddy currents
induced by the electromagnetic action in the material to be heated.
• To develop sufficient amount of heat, the resistance of the material
must be low , which is possible only with the metals, and the voltage
must be higher, which can be obtained by employing higher flux and
higher frequency.
• Therefore, the magnetic materials can be heated rather than non
mangnetic materials.
Heat developed in the disc is depending upon
the following factors.
• Primary coil current.
• The number of the turns of the coil.
• Supply frequency.
• The magnetic coupling between the coil and the disc.
• The high electrical resistivity of the disc.
• If the charge to be heated is non-magnetic, then the heat developed
is due to eddy current loss, whereas if it is magnetic material, there
will be hysteresis loss in addition to eddy current loss.
• Both hysteresis and eddy current loss are depended upon frequency,
but at high-frequency hysteresis, loss is very small as compared to
eddy currents.
• The depth of penetration of induced currents into the disc is given by:

• where ρ is the specific resistance in Ω-cm, f is the frequency in Hz,

and μ is the permeability
• of the charge.
There are basically two types of induction
furnaces
• 1. Core type or low-frequency induction furnace.
• Direct core type.
• Vertical core type.(Ajax Wyatt induction furnance)
• . Indirect core type

2. Coreless type or high-frequency induction.

[Link] Heating
• When non-metallic parts such as wood, plastics, bones are subjected to an
alternating electrostatic field dielectric loss occurs.
• In dielectric heating use of these losses is made. The material to be heated
is placed as a slab between metallic plates or electrodes connected to high
frequency ac supply.
• For producing sufficient heat frequency between 10 and 30 MHz is used.
Even though voltage up to 20 kV have been used but from personnel safety
point of view voltages between 600 V and 3 kV are in common use.
• The necessary high-frequency supply is obtained from a valve oscillator, as
in the case of high frequency eddy current heating, explained already.
• An overall efficiency is about 50%
The current drawn by the capacitor, when an ac supply voltage is
applied across its two plates, does not lead the supply voltage by
exactly 90° and there is always an in-phase component of the current.
Due to this in-phase (or active) component of current, heat is always
produced in the dielectric material placed in between the two plates
of the capacitor. The electric energy dissipated in the form of heat
energy in the dielectric material is known as dielectric loss. The
dielectric loss is directly proportional to the frequency of ac supply
given to the two plates of the capacitor. The physical conception of
the dielectric loss is just as a molecular friction in the dielectric
material when an ac electrostatic field is applied to it.
• Insulators being poor conductors cannot be heated up quickly from
outside. In dielectric heating the heat is produced within the material
itself. Because heat generation is uniform, the dielectric material is
heated uniformly. This is the important property of dielectric heating.
• Normally frequency used for dielectric heating is in the range of 1–40
MHz. The use of high voltage is also limited due to the breakdown
voltage of thin dielectric that is to be heated, under normal
conditions; the voltage gradient used is limited to 18 kV/cm.
Advantages of Dielectric Heating
• The heating of the non-conducting materials is very rapid.
• The uniform heating of material is possible.
• Heat is produced in the whole mass of the material
The applications of the dielectric heating
• The drying of paper, wood, etc.
• The gluing of wood.
• The heat-sealing of plastic sheets.
• The heating for the general processing such as coffee roasting and chocolate
industry.
• The heating for the dehydration such as milk, cream, and vegetables.
• The preparation of thermoplastic resins.
• The heating of bones and tissues.
• Diathermy, i.e., the heat treatment for certain body pains and diseases, etc.
• The sterilization of absorbent cotton, bandages, etc.
• The processing of rubber, synthetic materials, chemicals, etc.