INVESTIGATIONS ON USE OF MICROWAVE ENERGY IN WORKSHOP WASTE TREATMENT

Abstract

During manufacturing processes in workshops, a lot of material is wasted as scrap wasted in the form of metal chips, pieces, cutting fluids etc. The conventional techniques used for recycling of scrap are not efficient economically. 'l'hey require a lot of time for processing and cause pollution. Microwave processing of materials is a new technique for processing materials efficiently with lower power consumption, small processing time and lesser pollution. Microwaves have a characteristic property that when it interacts with material it may result in absorption, reflection or transmission. Microwave absorbed by the materials results in heating and due to heating the material above its melting point, the material gets melted. Metals can't be processed directly by microwave as they reflect most of the radiation. The conventional microwave heating technique is limited to he used only for those materials which can absorb microwave. Microwave hybrid heating is used to solve the purpose as the heating is done by microwave as well as the direct heating by the susceptor materials. The properties of the material processed by microwave hybrid heating are better than conventional methods and the time required for processing is smaller as compared to conventional processes. The process is safe and clean. Microwave hybrid heating is used for processing of metals because they reflect most of the radiation, so direct heating is not possible. The metal waste collected from workshop is processed with microwave and the product obtained is having desired mechanical and metallurgical properties.