Sustainability of microwave heating in materials processing technologies

Abstract

In this cutting-edge technology, industrial and competitive era, the sustainability of any manufacturing processes needs utmost attention. Sustainability itself is a broad term which can be related to the number of parameters of any process may be its efficiency, product quality, power and time consumptions, suitability of a variety of materials etc. Such parameters of sustainability can only be achieved by finding novel routes of manufacturing or materials processing technologies. The conventional systems are going out of trends due to higher energy demands and higher time consumption to achieve the desired goals instead of using conventional processes. A lot of research is going in this direction for developing processes which are clean and green methods. Microwave Processing (MWP) of materials and heating technology is one such novel route which can be used for processing of ceramics, metal matrix composites (MMC), fibre reinforced plastics (FRP), alloys, metals, material joining, coating, cladding, materials synthesis etc. The present work reports the various applications of microwave energy in various materials processing technologies, its advantages and sustainability issues. The microwave heating started with the food industry and now has penetrated its presence in the domain of metals. The microwaves are now used for processing of a variety of materials, including bulk metals in the area of cladding, joining, melting and casting. The broad perspectives of using MWP are highlighted and recent innovative contributions in this area are highlighted. Focus is on the recent trends and techniques used in microwave materials processing and its effective utilization can be compared to conventional processes. Some parameters for comparison to sustainability of various manufacturing/processing technologies are discussed in the present work.