Effect of Porosity and Particle Size on Microwave Heating of Copper

The present study investigates the effect of varying particle size and porosity on the heating behavior of a metallic particulate compact in a 2.45GHz multimode microwave furnace. Experiments on copper suggest that unlike monolithic (bulk) materials, metallic materials do couple with microwaves when they are in particulate form. The powder compacts having higher porosity and smaller particle sizes interact more effectively with microwaves and are heated more rapidly. A dynamic electromagnetic-thermal model was developed to simulate the temporal temperature distribution using a 2-D finite difference time domain (FDTD) approach. The model predicts the variation in temperature with time during heating of copper powder compacts. The simulated heating profiles correlate well with those observed from experiments.