Abstract
As a heating method, microwave heating plays an important role in foods, materials and minerals processing because it has properties like selective heating, volumetric heating and rapid heating, which also attracts more attention for researchers to apply microwave to metallurgical processes. For example, some researchers have investigated microwave sintering of magnetite concentrates, green balls roasting, slag treatment and metal minerals treatment. This paper briefly summarizes the development of microwave applications in metallurgical process in China, mostly involving in drying of agglomerations, sintering of magnetite concentrates and reduction of iron ore concentrates. Although a great improvement of microwave application has been attained in China, it is still in lab-scale, while how to apply these processes or technologies to industry scale still needs a further research.
