Currently funded project

Heating dishes by induction makes it possible to keep food warm directly on the plate or other serving vessel in an energy-saving and hygienic way or to heat it up specifically before consumption. This option is increasingly being used in the restaurant and catering sector and in larger facilities such as hospitals or nursing homes. The induction tableware currently available on the market uses only metallic layers for coupling to the electromagnetic field, which must be subsequently applied to the non-conductive porcelain or other ceramic tableware. The very different expansion coefficients of metal and porcelain limit the
so far the applicability of induction cookware.

The project will develop ceramic products that can be heated by electromagnetic induction without the use of metallic components.
Instead of the silver layers used so far, which require an additional work step (decorating with a metal layer and decor firing), purely ceramic materials are to be developed for the inductive heating effect.
This should make inductive heating products not only cheaper (due to cheaper raw materials and higher energy efficiency in production), but also much more flexible in functionality and design.

The sub-project worked on at the HTL comprises the following work steps:

• Systematic material selection using databases and thermodynamic calculations (Software FactSage)
• Calculations and simulations of local inductive energy input for core-shell particles (magnetic / electrically conductive)
  
• Finite-element simulations of heating effect, heat flows and resulting thermal stresses in porcelain vessels depending on the material concept for inductive heating
  
• Tests for the production of inductively heatable ceramic samples
  
• Experiments to characterise the energy input by induction into the produced samples