What is the essential difference between the working principle of Amorphous Alloy Dry Type Transformer and traditional transformers?

Traditional transformers use silicon steel sheets as the core material of the iron core, and their crystal structure presents a highly ordered lattice arrangement. This periodic structure will cause significant energy loss in the alternating magnetic field due to magnetic domain steering hysteresis (hysteresis loss) and eddy current induction (eddy current loss), and the no-load loss accounts for up to 60%-70% of the total loss.
The breakthrough of amorphous alloy materials lies in the microstructure of their disordered atomic arrangement. Through rapid cooling technology (cooling rate of 10^6 ℃/second), the molten metal skips the crystal nucleus formation stage during the solidification process and directly forms a solid alloy with randomly distributed atoms (such as Fe-Si-B system). This disordered structure gives the material three major properties:
Magnetic isotropy: no preference for magnetization direction, and the resistance to magnetic domain reversal is reduced by more than 90%;
Ultra-low coercivity (<10 A/m): the hysteresis loop area is reduced to 1/5 of that of silicon steel sheets;
Resistivity doubled (130 μΩ·cm vs 47 μΩ·cm for silicon steel): eddy current loss is significantly suppressed.
In the life cycle cost of transformers, no-load loss accounts for more than 40%. Amorphous Alloy Dry Type Transformer achieves a leap in energy efficiency through the following mechanisms:
Dimensional upgrade of eddy current suppression
Traditional silicon steel sheets rely on insulating coatings to reduce interlayer eddy currents, while the thickness of amorphous alloy strips is only 25-30μm (1/10 of silicon steel sheets), combined with ultra-high resistivity, which reduces eddy current losses to 1/20 of traditional transformers.
Measured data: The no-load loss of a 500kVA amorphous alloy dry-type transformer is 120W, while the same capacity silicon steel transformer is 450W, and the annual power saving exceeds 2800kWh.
Traditional oil-immersed transformers rely on mineral oil circulation to dissipate heat, which has problems such as flammability and complex maintenance. Amorphous alloy dry-type transformers achieve revolutionary breakthroughs through triple thermodynamic optimization:
Core-coil thermal coupling design
The operating temperature of the amorphous alloy core is 15-20℃ lower than that of silicon steel, combined with the H-class insulation coil cast by epoxy resin vacuum, to form a gradient heat dissipation channel.
Airway topology optimization
The airway layout simulated by CFD (computational fluid dynamics) increases the air convection efficiency by 40%, and the temperature rise limit is ≤100K (IEC 60076-11 standard).
Anti-harmonic material system
The magnetic permeability stability of amorphous alloys in the high frequency band of 2kHz-10kHz is better than that of silicon steel. Combined with the nanocrystalline magnetic shielding layer, the harmonic loss can be suppressed to less than 3%.
The total life cycle cost (TCO) of amorphous alloy dry-type transformers is more than 30% lower than that of traditional products:
Energy efficiency benefits: Based on a 20-year life cycle, a 500kVA-class product can save 56,000kWh of electricity and reduce CO₂ emissions by 45 tons;
Maintenance costs: The oil-free design reduces maintenance operations by 90%, and the MTBF (mean time between failures) exceeds 180,000 hours;
Policy dividends: It complies with the first-level energy efficiency standards such as IEC TS 63042 and GB/T 22072, and enjoys a government subsidy of up to 15%.
Driven by the "dual carbon" goal, Amorphous Alloy Dry Type Transformer has occupied 23% of the global distribution transformer market (Frost & Sullivan 2023 data), and is accelerating its penetration into high-end fields such as data centers, offshore wind power, and high-speed maglev. Its collaborative innovation of materials, structure, and energy efficiency not only redefines the technical boundaries of transformers, but also becomes a key puzzle in building a zero-loss smart grid.