Microwave heating
The principles of microwave heating as applied to industrial processing are outlined and the basic
design of applicators for material processing is described. Industrial applications range from food
tempering to rubber vulcanisation and from vacuum drying to sintering of ceramics. Established
applications to date are summarised.
By A.C. Metaxas
Microwave heating is a process within a family of electroheat techniques, such as induction, radio
frequency, direct resistance or infra-red heating, all of which utilise specific parts of the
electromagnetic spectrum. These processes supplement, and in specific cases totally replace,
conventional heating or drying systems used in industry. This is because some conventional
systems are very bulky, not easy to operate, can pollute the environment due to harmful
omissions and above all can be very inefficient.
The major advantages of using microwaves for industrial processing are rapid heat transfer,
volumetric and selective heating, compactness of equipment, speed of switching on and off and
pollution-free environment as there are no products of combustion. Microwave leakage can
certainly be kept well below government recommended levels.
Fundamentals of microwave heating
Dielectric loss
It has long been established that a dielectric material can be processed with energy in the form of
high-frequency electromagnetic waves. There are many distinct frequency bands which have
been allocated for industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) use, as shown in Table 1, with the
principal frequencies centred at 896 MHz (915 MHz in the USA) and 2450 MHz for which
equipment can be readily purchased.
In this frequency regime there are primarily two physical mechanisms through which energy can
be transferred to a non-metallic material. At the lower microwave frequencies conductive currents
flowing within the material due to the movement of ionic constituents, such as salts for example,
can transfer energy from the microwave field to the material. This loss mechanism is
characterised by an equivalent dielectric conductivity term σ, giving effectively a loss parameter of
σ/ωεο.
At the other end of the microwave heating spectrum, around 3000 MHz, the energy absorption is
primarily due to the existence of permanent dipole molecules which tend to re-orientate under the
influence of a microwave electric field, as shown in the inset of Fig. 1. This re-orientation loss
mechanism originates from the inability of the polarisation to follow extremely rapid reversals of
the electric field. At such high frequencies therefore the resulting polarisation phasor lags the
applied electric field. This ensures that the resulting current density has a component in phase
with the field, and therefore power is dissipated in the dielectric material.