Alexander Warning

Understanding of microwave heating in a novel designed cavity with monopole antennas

This research presents a novel designed cavity system for improving microwave heating efficiency. Microwave heat- ing at 2.45 GHz with monopole antennas in a cavity is compared with the conventional magnetron heating on a tylose block. The model for both heating methods was first validated versus experimental results and showed excellent agreement. The antenna heating in a cavity significantly improved the heating rate and uniformity in the tylose sample. The cavity heating method exhibited nearly twice the efficiency as sample sizes increased. The cavity design improves the microwave absorption and final temperature uniformity substantially over the traditional microwave oven. Notably within the first 60 seconds, the non-uniformity in temperature distribution begins to decrease in the cavity while the magnetron method still shows increasing temperature non-uniformity. The novel use of antennas in a cavity demonstrates the potential for a controllable and selectable microwave heating system that improves power efficiency, heating rate, and temperature uniformity over conventional mi- crowave heating.