Electromagnetic and thermal history during microwave heating

In microwave heating, the energy is directly introduced into the material resulting in a rapid and volumetric heating process with reduced thermal gradients, when the electromagnetic field is homogeneous. From those reasons, the microwave technology has been widely used in the industry to process dielectric materials. The capacity to heat with microwave radiation is related with the dielectric properties of the materials and the electromagnetic field distribution. The knowledge of the permittivity dependence with the temperature is essential to understand the thermal distribution and to minimize the non-homogeneity of the electromagnetic field. To analyse the history of the heating process, the evolution of the electromagnetic field, the temperature and the skin depth, were simulated dynamically in a ceramic sample. The evaluation of the thermal runaway has also been made. This is the most critical phenomenon observed in the sintering of ceramic materials because it causes deformations, or even melting on certain points in the material, originating the destruction of it. In our study we show that during the heating process the hot spot's have some dynamic, and at high temperatures most of the microwave energy is absorbed at the surface of the material. We also show the existence of a time-delay of the thermal response with the electromagnetic changes. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.