EFFECT OF SAMPLE-SIZE ON THE MICROWAVE-HEATING RATE - OIL VS WATER

It is generally believed that oil samples heat faster in a microwave oven than do water samples of the same mass. For sufficiently large and thick samples this conventional wisdom is indeed correct, but this trend can be far from true in smaller samples. In a commercially-made home microwave oven, we observed that with decreasing sample size the heating rate of a water sample increases much faster than that of an oil sample. At 50 g the heating rate of a water sample is several times greater than that of an oil sample. Additionally, in studies of cylindrical samples in a customized oven having a unidirectional microwave source, the heating rate of water samples smaller than 2.4 cm in radius is greater than that of oil samples and is a strongly oscillatory increasing function of decreasing sample radius. Combining Maxwell's theory of microwave penetration and the heat conduction equation, we show that this previously unreported oscillatory heating behavior results from the added power absorbed by samples due to resonant absorption of microwaves. The added power arises from standing waves produced by internally reflected microwaves. This effect is small for oil because only 3% of the microwave power is reflected at an oil-air interface. On the other hand, 64% is reflected at a water-air interface, which causes strong resonant heating. Our findings might prove to be useful for future consumer food product development or oven design.