Ecological and Economic Feasibility of Inductive Heating for Sustainable Press Hardening Processes

Press hardening is an established process for producing high-strength, lightweight structural automotive parts, utilising roller hearth furnaces to heat metal sheets. It presents a non-negligible source of greenhouse gas emissions in part production processes. This paper investigates the ecological and economic advantages of induction as an alternative heating method and identifies break-even scenarios. Therefore, specific energy demands for various furnace and induction heating operating states are determined and applied to different energy system transition scenarios. It can be shown that while induction heating can be more energy efficient than furnace heating, its ecological and economic advantages are highly dependent on regional electricity-togas price ratios and electric energy emission factors. For high good-mass flows (0.5 kg/s) and 80% production capacity utilisation, an electricity-to-gas price ratio lower than 1.24 and an emission factor lower than 250 gCO2/kWh are required.