Industrial microwave processing systems are an integral part of many industrial manufacturing processes, used, for example, in processes ranging from the production of food and food ingredients, sterilisation, vulcanisation of rubber, to the processing of pharmaceutical reagents.
Microwave technology offers many benefits:
- heating rates orders of magnitude faster than other conventional sources;
- selectively heating one material contained within another;
- uniform heating throughout the entirety of a material (known as volumetric heating);
- excellent and instantaneous control over energy delivery; and
- the ability to be powered by sustainably generated electricity.
There are, however, some significant challenges in the industrial use of microwave technology:
- poor heating homogeneity;
- expensive equipment due to bespoke designs;
- poorly-defined value propositions not supported by pilot-scale test work; and
- an inability to operate at temperatures above 250ºC due to issues arising from materials of construction.,
Due to these difficulties the history of industrial microwave applications has been fraught with unresolved challenges.
Working with the University of Nottingham, we have developed a new system based on our proven industrial process reactor technology and named the TORWAVE processor which solves these problems and can be deployed across the process industries, including in food processing, specialist chemical manufacture, demanding drying applications, and in regeneration and manufacture of catalysts.
We have moved beyond pilot testing and have delivered the first production model: a leap forward for industrial microwave processing.