Microwave Energy Application for Materials' Processing and Environmental Technology

Abstract

Microwave heating was discovered more than 60 years ago. And nowadays, it became popular for the use as domestic ovens. Microwave has also been utilized for the industrial processes, such as drying and roasting. On the other hand, there have been many applications of microwave, being investigated for materials' processing and environmental technologies. They are attempted to take advantage of some specific characteristics in microwave heating, which differs from that of the conventional one. Rapid heating, internal heating, selective heating are the features to be taken into consideration. Moreover, so-called "non-thermal effect" is the additional feature in which researchers are particularly interested. In this article, it is intended to describe fundamental aspects in microwave heating and introduce some selected topics of research projects performed in our research group. They include researches on fabrication of some functional materials and on handling industrial wastes etc. In this article, it is also intended to interpret the phenomena observed in these applications from the fundamental view points of electromagnetic wave interaction with materials.