Heatal Project: Replacement of Copper with Aluminum in Electrical Heating Cables

The 5 partners in this project are Heat Trace Ltd, University of Manchester, Innoval Technology, 3M UK and Watlow Ltd.
This project has been very successful and showed that
1) Aluminium can replace copper in existing electrical heating products and significantly reduce costs. These products will be more competitive in existing and new markets
2) The use of aluminium has enabled two novel product designs, which are major innovative steps in electrical heating technology. The first is a flexible laminated heater which can be customised to fit around any shape of object to be heated. The second is an integrated heated pipe which will radically change conventional pipe trace heating, giving major savings in the costs of the product, installation and operational energy.
Heat Trace has installed a continuous aluminium extruder line for the development and production of these novel aluminium based products. There is a wide range of markets applications including industrial (oil and chemical industries, power stations, rail, automotive, aerospace); commercial (hospitals, schools, offices) and residential (under-floor heating, frost protection and heated hot water pipes)