Research areas

Microwave and metals: applications range from extractive metallurgy (separation, reduction, milling) to powder metallurgy (debinding, sintering) and synthesis of new alloys like high entropy alloys and intermetallics

Drying: the rapid and selective microwave heating has been proficiently used to dry natural products or to speed up many processes in the wood industry, like painting and glueing

Sintering: the accelerated formation of necks in case of metal or ceramic sintering is one of the main advantages of the use of microwaves, together with the possibility to achieve peculiar temperature profiles inside the load, thus minimizing stresses and risk of damage.

Melting: when it comes to low thermal conductivity materials, microwave volumetric heating can play an important role. We used it for the vitrification of harmful materials, like asbestos, or simply to reprocess waste

Recycling: the selective heating offered by microwaves is particularly useful when processing multi-phase or multi-component materials. When it comes to waste, it means that the harmful portion of the waste can be efficiently treated, avoiding spending energy on the remaining fraction of the waste. Please have a lokk at what can be done with spent catalysts, asbestos or EDM powders

Food: a typical application of microwaves, that we investigated in the field of rapid defrosting or to modify the way some beverages can be brewed

Chemical syntehsis: faster reactions, better yield, even different products or no byproducts. Such advantages have been exploited by MAG mainly in the nucelation and growth of nanoparticles with monodispersed particle size and controlled morphology. But also for the rapid extraction of nutraceuticals and flavours.

Numerical simulation: to design special microwave applicators, or to gain a better insight into a microwave assisted process. The use of FDTD or FEM is particularly useful in reducing the time to market for a new applicator or to “measure” temeprature in avery portion of the load and optimizing its homogenous heating.

Other: microwave plasma, PET processing, hospital waste sterilization

Equipment

Different kind of generators, transmission lines and applicators are used everyday by the people of the Microwave Application Group. Here is a short list; follow the links to have a look at them

Some are plain or modified commercial laboratory systems, some other were assembled during the years to fullfil the different needs