Effect of particle size and relative density on powdery Fe3O4 microwave heating

In recent years, microwave energy is expected to be a heat source of high temperature process aiming for CO2 reduction and energy conservation owing to the possibility of volumetric heating. In order to examine the applicability of microwave heating to ironmaking, it is important to investigate the microwave heating of raw materials of ironmaking such as Fe3O4. In this study, the effect of particle size and relative density on microwave absorptivity of powdery Fe3O4 was elucidated by the heating curves. Powdery Fe3O4 samples having different particle sizes and relative densities and bulk Fe3O4 samples were heated at the positions of the H (magnetic) and E (electric) field maxima in a 2.45 GHz single-mode microwave cavity. Sample temperatures abruptly increase and become constant after a while. At a constant temperature, the energy balance is attained, i.e., the rate of microwave energy absorption is equal to the rate of thermal energy dissipation. Assuming that the thermal energy dissipation rate due to convection and radiation heat fluxes is only a function of the sample temperature, the microwave absorptivity could be evaluated by the temperature at the steady state. It has been found that the microwave absorptivity of Fe3O4 powder decreases with an increase in relative density. On the other hand, the microwave absorptivity hardly depends on the particle size, which may be due to its quite a large penetration depth of Fe3O4 compared to metal.