Chairmen's Introduction

Microwave industrial-scale processing found its earliest application in the food industry for drying, pasteurizing, and cooking. The motivations for using microwaves to replace conventional technologies related to order of magnitude reductions in processing time, improved product yields, and reduction of space required for processing. Today, the unique characteristics of microwave transfer of energy has led to its increasing use in many other industrial applications including ceramics processing, chemical synthesis, plasma processes including surface treatments, materials synthesis of both coatings and bulk materials, e.g., graphene and diamond, and more. We will review the benefits and limitations of microwave processing as a process intensification tool, present some specific examples of microwave processing hardware, and discuss potential future applications.