Design and Performance Analysis Results of Iron-Core Type MgB2 and HTS Magnets for Large-Scale Superconducting Induction Heaters

Conventional induction heaters that have a large capacity to preheat metal billets for the extrusion and forging of products, such as copper, titanium, carbon, and stainless steels, have low energy efficiency (below 60%) due to considerable losses from the copper coils. The MAGHEET, a preheating machine for the extrusion and forging plants as called a superconducting induction heater (SIH), is one of several efforts that aim to improve their efficiency. Supercoil Co., Ltd. has developed two types of superconducting magnets for large-scale SIH: MgB2magnets and HTS magnets. In this paper, we introduce the design specifications and performance analysis results of these two types of superconducting magnets under the same conduction cooling conditions. The cooling and excitation characteristics of the two superconducting magnets at near 10 K are presented and compared. The first commercial MAGHEET is also introduced.