A wide range of industrial metallurgical heating and melting processes are carried out using electrothermal technologies. The application of electrothermal processes offers many advantages from technological, ecological and economical point of view. Although the technology level of the electro heating and melting installations and processes used in the industry today is very high, there are still potentials for improvement and optimization due to the increasing complexity of the applications and the strong requirements regarding the performance and quality of the products but also regarding the reduction of time and costs for the development of new processes and technologies. In this paper recent applications and future development trends for efficient heating and melting by electrothermal technologies in metallurgical processes are described along selected examples like induction heating for forging or rolling of billets, heat treatment of strips and plates, press-hardening processes, induction surface hardening of complex geometries, induction welding as well as induction melting processes.
