Industrial heat is about a quarter of the world's final energy, and most of it still comes from burning fuel. Electric technologies heat inside the material, control the temperature precisely and can be fed by renewable electricity — which is why the electrification of process heat is one of the decisive industrial questions of this decade. This course is about how those technologies work, how to size them, and how to decide when they are worth using.
It is written for materials engineers and chemical engineers, not for electrical engineers. No previous course in electrical engineering is assumed: the physics is introduced with the minimum formalism needed to size a process and to read a supplier's specification. Everything is built around one question — given this material and this transformation, which electrical technology should heat it, how big should the equipment be, and does it pay?
The course is in three parts. We begin with why and when to electrify: industrial heat by temperature band, the electricity supply chain seen from the process, and a compact decision framework based on primary energy, cost and CO₂. We then go through the technologies one by one — the Joule effect, induction, resistance furnaces, radio-frequency and microwave heating, infrared, arc and plasma, and the electric routes that are not Joule heating at all, such as heat pumps, vapour recompression and electrolysis — always asking the same four questions: what physics generates the heat, what the equipment delivers, how it is sized, and what it costs. We close with the use cases, sector by sector: metals, ceramics, glass, polymers and composites, chemicals and cement, food and bio-based products.
Three laboratory sessions at the EM4E-Lab (via Gradenigo 6/a) put numbers on what is discussed in class: you will measure the energy balance of a resistance furnace, the coil–load efficiency of an induction heater, and the power delivered by microwave and RF applicators. In parallel you will work in teams on the Electrification Challenge: choose a real process that needs heat, design its electric route, and defend the choice with energy, cost and CO₂ numbers.
Practical information. 6 CFU, 24 sessions of two hours, from 28 September to 21 December 2026. Lectures on Monday 12:30–14:30 (room ICH1) and Tuesday 8:30–10:30 (room M6); laboratories in the Monday afternoon slot. Teaching and examination are in English. The mark combines the group project work (50 %), participation with profit during the course (20 %) and a final oral examination (30 %).
Material. Course notes written for this course are published here part by part, following the programme; the slides of each lecture are posted after the lecture. The reference text is S. Lupi, Fundamentals of Electroheat: Electrical Technologies for Process Heating (Springer, 2016), available through the university library.
Prof. Fabrizio Dughiero — Department of Industrial Engineering — fabrizio.dughiero@unipd.it
It is written for materials engineers and chemical engineers, not for electrical engineers. No previous course in electrical engineering is assumed: the physics is introduced with the minimum formalism needed to size a process and to read a supplier's specification. Everything is built around one question — given this material and this transformation, which electrical technology should heat it, how big should the equipment be, and does it pay?
The course is in three parts. We begin with why and when to electrify: industrial heat by temperature band, the electricity supply chain seen from the process, and a compact decision framework based on primary energy, cost and CO₂. We then go through the technologies one by one — the Joule effect, induction, resistance furnaces, radio-frequency and microwave heating, infrared, arc and plasma, and the electric routes that are not Joule heating at all, such as heat pumps, vapour recompression and electrolysis — always asking the same four questions: what physics generates the heat, what the equipment delivers, how it is sized, and what it costs. We close with the use cases, sector by sector: metals, ceramics, glass, polymers and composites, chemicals and cement, food and bio-based products.
Three laboratory sessions at the EM4E-Lab (via Gradenigo 6/a) put numbers on what is discussed in class: you will measure the energy balance of a resistance furnace, the coil–load efficiency of an induction heater, and the power delivered by microwave and RF applicators. In parallel you will work in teams on the Electrification Challenge: choose a real process that needs heat, design its electric route, and defend the choice with energy, cost and CO₂ numbers.
Practical information. 6 CFU, 24 sessions of two hours, from 28 September to 21 December 2026. Lectures on Monday 12:30–14:30 (room ICH1) and Tuesday 8:30–10:30 (room M6); laboratories in the Monday afternoon slot. Teaching and examination are in English. The mark combines the group project work (50 %), participation with profit during the course (20 %) and a final oral examination (30 %).
Material. Course notes written for this course are published here part by part, following the programme; the slides of each lecture are posted after the lecture. The reference text is S. Lupi, Fundamentals of Electroheat: Electrical Technologies for Process Heating (Springer, 2016), available through the university library.
Prof. Fabrizio Dughiero — Department of Industrial Engineering — fabrizio.dughiero@unipd.it
- Enseignant: Fabrizio Dughiero