We developed a cylindrical resonator-type microwave (MW) heating reactor with the function of real-time monitoring of dielectric properties. Using automatic detection and tracking functions of the resonance frequency shift with a variable-frequency semiconductor generator, we estimated qualitative variations of the relative dielectric constant and dielectric loss factor for continuous heating of ethylene glycol without connecting a network analyzer. Additionally, we undertook resin-pellet drying using this reactor with a weight measurement function. The drying state of the resin pellets was estimated using resonance frequency variation. Moreover, differences of moisture reduction and resin-pellet melting were distinguished in situ from variation of the resonance curve corresponding to the S21 parameter.

A method to study the physical phenomena of the molten metal under the AC magnetic field has been required to design the electromagnetic (EM) dam system. This confines a side of the molten metal by Lorentz force without contact between the side wall and the molten metal. In this work, we have developed a numerical analysis method to predict the 3-D phenomena of the molten metal considering the free surface. To evaluate steady the state of the molten metal including the free surface, the integrated computational errors are eliminated after certain iteration step. This process avoids the solution diverged and provides the converged steady state solution. However, although the error elimination process neglects the physical phenomena of smaller scale than the elimination time step related, this method could predict slowly varying the surface shape obtained by the experiment. By using this method, the effects of magnetic field direction and the EM boundary condition on the surface shape are investigated. The profile of Lorentz force corresponding to the direction of magnetic field and boundary condition was found to affect the flow pattern resulting in the change of the steady state surface shape.