Microwave drying of spheres: Coupled electromagnetics-multiphase transport modeling with experimentation. Part I: Model development and experimental methodology

• Microwave drying of a hygroscopic porous material is studied in a fundamental way.
• A mechanistic framework for understanding microwave drying is presented.
• Different sized spheres are dried in a domestic microwave oven at 10% power level.
• Elaborate experimental setup is built to measure key process parameters.

To understand the effects of shape, size and property changes in a spherical sample during microwave drying, a fundamentals-based coupled electromagnetics and multiphase porous media model is developed and associated experimental details are described. Microwave drying of different sized spheres is carried out in a domestic microwave oven operating at 10% power level. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetics are solved inside a three dimensional (3D) microwave oven to obtain the electric field distribution inside the oven cavity and the spheres. The drying samples are treated as a porous media consisting of three phases: solid (skeleton), liquid (water) and gas (water vapor and air). Modes of transport for the fluid phases include capillary flow, binary diffusion between vapor and air, gas pressure driven flow and phase change between liquid water and vapor which is spatially distributed. An elaborate experimental system comprising of infrared camera, optical fiber probe and digital balance is built to validate the model in terms of temperature distribution, point temperatures, gas pressure generation and moisture loss from the samples at different times during the drying process. Results, validation, sensitivity analysis and “what-if” scenarios are presented in the companion paper. The work together would provide tremendous benefits when designing and developing microwave drying processes and products through a novel synergy between physics-based modeling and detailed experimentation.