Microwave Processing Applied To Ceramic Reactions

The necessary energy for processing ceramics usually comes from gas firing or electricity. With gas firing, ceramics processing is conducted at relative low temperatures. In the case of electric arc furnace, temperatures are high enough to smelt the material and the reaction takes place in a liquid state. In this work we use microwave radiation for conducting reactions between oxides to produce ceramic materials, mainly spinels. The microwave energy was supplied using an 800W magnetron operating at 2.45 GHz. The microstructure and the mineral composition were studied by means of SEM and X-Ray diffractometer respectively.