Abstract
As the applications to auto-industry using microwave heating in near future, the mass production manufacturing of various materials such as ceramics or metal powders, the heating power supply such as fuel-cell or electric vehicles, and the environmental treatments of emission gas purification or metal recovery will be expected. In our research, a microwave heating of porous ceramics was tried by using newly developed cavity and microwave absorbents. We developed an "ultrahigh-speed heating" method of obtaining above 100°C/s in microwave radiation. Next, we started a research and development of microwave reforming, using a combination of bio-ethanol and microwave heating. Biomass is expected as both the renewable energy and the CO2 reduction. In microwave reforming, only a catalyst layer is selectively heated from the inside at a short time, so it becomes possible to produce hydrogen gas with a simple setup and at a low temperature of 500°C. High reformer efficiency of 80%, twice compared to the conventional one, and the activation energies decreased about 30%. Furthermore, as microwave basic technologies, the relations between dielectric properties and microwave heating of powder materials, the calculations of electro-magnetic field distributions in the cavity, and the heating characteristics of metal powders were investigated.
