抄録
In recent years, the author has faced threats of global warming and depletion of energy resources. The ceramic industry adversely affects the environment. Its energy consumption per product is high because it requires a long period of heating at high temperature during manufacturing and because it emits many greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide during the manufacturing process. The author has been studying toward simplifying and shortening the ceramic manufacturing process from forming to sintering aiming at reducing the environmental load using the utilization of the unique reaction field of an electromagnetic field environment created by microwaves. The microwave heating has various features such as selective heating and internal heating, and it offers the possibility of an energy-saving effect through effective energy consumption. In this paper, the recent topics of our research using microwave technology for development of ceramics manufacturing process are introduced, and the future of ceramics manufacturing process is discussed from the viewpoint of environmental load reduction.
