Study of the high heating efficiency and uniformity by multi-port sweep frequency microwave irradiations

Abstract

As a clean energy, microwaves have been widely used in thermal engineering. However, in the traditional microwave heating process, it is difficult to obtain high heating efficiency and uniformity. In this paper, a novel multi-port sweep frequency heating method is proposed to solve this problem. Multi-physics modelling and experiment are carried out to study the mechanism, efficiency, and uniformity of multi-port sweep frequency heating. The simulation and experimental results agree well, which demonstrates the proposed method can make heating more efficient and uniform. In addition, important factors affecting the heating efficiency and uniformity are also discussed, including the multi-port and frequency sweep effects, the polarization direction of the electromagnetic waves, and the bandwidth of the sweep frequency. This study can help us make better use of microwave energy.

Keywords:

• Microwave
• sweep frequency
• thermal engineering
• heating uniformity
• multi-port

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant Nos. 61701049, 61971295] and the Sichuan Science and Technology Program [grant No. 2020YFG0155].