Greenwave has the only proven ultra-high power industrial scale microwave system in the world for natural resource processing and is able to breakthrough the constraint of green metallurgy
Microwave Energy is a New Source of Green Energy
- The US Department of Energy and Advanced Manufacturing Office has listed Microwave Energy as a “foundational technology” which has a high economic and energetic impact relative to the technology development cost and is broadly applicable and pervasive across many industries and markets
- Microwave technology is an enabling technology that can generate outcomes not readily achievable by other means
- Conventional energy issues such as long heating periods, thermal gradients, and energy lost to the system environment can be minimized or avoided by using microwave energy
- Other advantages of microwave heating over conventional methods, include the high reaction speed, milder reaction conditions, higher chemical yields, lower energy consumption, and a wider range of reaction choice. Microwave is penetrative, absorbable, and reflexible, and thus can easily penetrate many materials such as glass, ceramic, and some plastics
Microwave energy is an alternative green energy source that has been a key focus for many industry experts for a wide spectrum of industrial applications. As the pressure to reduce pollution increases, microwave technology will be the future method of metallurgy and natural resource processing. Proven results are being put into industrial application, with a particular focus in the natural resource and metallurgical industry.
A major advantage of microwave systems is their “green” nature. Microwave furnaces generally heat only the objects to be processed, not the furnace walls or atmosphere. Energy-efficient microwave furnaces produce a substantially smaller carbon footprint, less pollutants, and lower operating and end-product costs. In addition, microwave processing can involve up to 90% shorter processing times and a corresponding decrease of up to 80% in energy consumption when compared with conventional methods for many commercial products.
Conventional heat treatment of minerals is highly energy intensive and not efficient, while microwave heating is much more efficient and cleaner. Conventional energy issues such as long heating periods, thermal gradients, and energy lost to the system environment can be minimized or avoided by using microwave energy. If the metal extraction through irradiating charcoal, metal oxide, and metal sulfide is conducted in a small microwave oven, some of the compounds can be heated to several hundred degrees within 1 minute. The efficient microwave heating technology can heat minerals simultaneously from the inside and the outside, which reduces the energy consumption in processing minerals.
Other advantages of microwave heating over conventional methods, include:
- High reaction speed
- Milder reaction conditions
- Higher chemical yields
- Lower energy consumption
- Wider range of reaction choice
Microwave is penetrative, absorbable, and reflexible, and thus can easily penetrate many materials such as glass, ceramic, and some plastics. Microwaving can also yield improved product quality with finer grain size, higher sintered density, increased corrosion resistance, and greater strength of finished parts. These advantages can be obtained with ceramics, a range of powdered metals (such as titanium, tungsten, molybdenum and steels), and “hardmetals” like tungsten carbide.
For traditional ceramic sintering, Japan’s National Institute of Fusion Science reported that microwave use enabled the reduction of processing time from 8 to 2 hours, energy consumption reduction from 335 to 63 KWh, and reduction of energy cost from $14 to $7 per batch. In the case of large-part alumina (up to 60 cm diameter), the sintering time was reduced from 96 to 20 hours, energy consumption from 5000 to 484 kWh and energy cost from $420 to $70 per batch.
Canada’s Ontario Energy Agency estimated that if the ceramic industry started using microwave instead of conventional processes for various ceramic products, the industry would save 412 million KWh per year, or the equivalent of one 350 MW coal-fired power plant. When extrapolated to all applications in North America, annual energy savings could be measured in Gigawatt hours.
Using microwave energy in steel production has achieved successful pilot-scale work in Japan. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that conversion of domestic steelmaking from conventional to microwave-assisted processing would save up to 14 million tons of coal burned for energy, thus reducing pollutant emissions by over 30 million tons of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide annually.
Historically in the U.S., low-temperature microwave processing has been used extensively in applications such as food and wood processing and drying. However, to date there are few domestic high-temperature commercial microwave applications. A primary challenge has been lack of sophisticated ultra-high power industrial scale microwave processing systems.
Due to the large scale of most natural resource processing systems and the lack of microwave hardware at power levels of above 100 kW, commercial applications of microwave energy for natural resource processing have been constrained.