Induction Heating for Variably Sized Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Materials through Load Modulation

Induction heating (IH) is a process of heating the electrically conducting materials especially ferromagnetic materials with the help of electromagnetic induction through generating heat in an object by eddy currents. A well-entrenched way of IH is to design a heating system pertaining to the usage of ferromagnetic materials such as stainless steel, iron, etc., which restricts the end user’s choice of using utensils made of ferromagnetic only. This research article proposes a new scheme of induction heating that is equally effective for heating ferromagnetic and non-ferromagnetic materials such as aluminium and copper. This is achieved by having a competent IH system that embodies a series resonant inverter and controller where a competent flexible load modulation (FLM) is deployed. FLM facilitates change in operating frequency in accordance with the type of material chosen for heating. The recent attempts by researchers on all metal IH have not addressed much on the variable shapes and sizes of the material, whereas this research attempts to address that issue as well. The proposed induction heating system is verified for a 2 kW system and is compatible with both industrial and domestic applications

Performance Enhancement of a Partially Shaded Photovoltaic Array by Optimal Reconfiguration and Current Injection Schemes

The output of a photovoltaic array is reduced considerably when PV panels are shaded even partially. The impact of shading causes an appreciable loss in power delivery, since the PV panels are connected in series and parallel to contribute to the required voltage and power for the load. The prevailing research on mitigating the shading impact is mostly based on complex reconfiguration strategies where the PV panels are subjected to complex rewiring schemes. On the other hand, to disperse the shading many studies in the literature defend the physical rearrangement of the panels. The available intensive reconfiguration schemes, such as the series parallel (SP), bridge link (BL), honeycomb (HC), and total cross tied (TCT) schemes, try only to mitigate the shading impact and there is no scope for compensation; as a result, a loss of output power is inevitable. In the proposed research work, both the mitigation of and the compensation for the losses incurred due to shading are studied. In this work, an optimal reconfiguration scheme is adopted to reduce the shading impact and a power electronic circuit with a battery source is designed to compensate for the shading losses in all aspects. In the optimal reconfiguration scheme, a bifurcation strategy is adopted in each column and the electrical connections of the PV panels are interchanged such that the shading impact is dispersed. The power electronic circuit consists of a half-bridge buck converter with a battery source that injects the current required by a shaded column. This setup compensates for the shaded PV array’s power and improves the efficiency of the total system. The proposed scheme was implemented in a 3200 W system and subjected to various shading patterns, including single panel shading, corner shading, long and wide shading, and random shading. The proposed scheme was simulated in the MATLAB Simulink environment and compared with static 4 × 4 PV array configurations, including the series parallel (SP), bridge link (BL), honeycomb (HC), and total cross tied (TCT) configurations. The comparative performance was assessed in terms of mismatch power loss, fill factor, and efficiency. The proposed system is suitable for all shading patterns and was proved to be very efficient even in the worst shading, where 1353 W was saved