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Heterogeneous mixtures have the potential to be used as synthetic substrates for antenna applications giving the antenna designer new degrees of freedom to control the permittivity and/or permeability in three dimensions such as by a smooth variation of the density of the inclusions, the height of the substrate and the manufacture the whole antenna system in one process. Electromagnetic, fabrication, environmental, time and cost advantages are potential especially when combined with nano-fabrication techniques. Readily available and cheap materials such as Polyethylene and Copper can be used in creating these heterogeneous materials. These advantages have been further explained in this thesis. In this thesis, the research presented is on canonical, numerical and measurement analysis on heterogeneous mixtures that can be used as substrates for microwave applications. It is hypothesised that heterogeneous mixtures can be used to design bespoke artificial dielectric substrates for say, patch antennas. The canonical equations from published literature describing the effective permittivity, ε_eff and effective permeability, μ_eff of heterogeneous mixtures have been extensively examined and compared with each other. Several simulations of homogenous and heterogeneous media have been carried out and an extraction/inversion algorithm applied to find their ε_eff and μ_eff. Parametric studies have been presented to show how the different variables of the equations and the simulations affect the accuracy of the results. The extracted results from the inversion process showed very good agreement with the known values of the homogenous media. Numerically and canonically computed values of ε_eff and μ_eff of various heterogeneous media were shown to have good agreement. The fabrication techniques used in creating the samples used in this research were examined, along with the different measurement methods used in characterising their electromagnetic properties via simulations and measurements. The challenges faced with these measurement methods were explained including the possible sources of error. Patch antennas were used to investigate how the performance of an antenna may be affected by heterogeneous media with metallic inclusions. The performance of the patch antenna was not inhibited by the presence of the metallic inclusions in close proximity. The patch measurement was also used as a measurement technique in determining the ε_eff of the samples.

In many energy and process engineering systems where fluids are processed, droplet-laden gas flows may occur. As droplets are often detrimental to the system’s operation, they are required to be removed. According to the state-of-the-art, industrial droplet removal is achieved through a sequential arrangement of several separators followed by droplet collection and discharge. This results in a high-quality gas stream, yet at the expense of bulky and expensive systems that are difficult to retrofit to existing facilities. In addition, the multiple sequential separators produce high pressure drops, further increasing operating costs. Alternatively, a single droplet separation stage and in situ evaporation would provide compact solutions for facilities. However, compact engineering solutions for the removal of entrained droplets are difficult to achieve with conventional flow control and conduction heat transfer approaches such as Joule heating. Joule heating requires a well-defined and homogeneous electrical resistance to ensure uniform heating, which is technically challenging to apply in fine separators and thus compact removal devices are hence often costly and ineffective. Therefore, it becomes necessary to investigate alternative heating approaches to overcome these challenges, such as volumetric heating using microwaves. The research conducted in this thesis aims to analyze the potential of a compact microwave solution approach for droplet removal. The compactness of the approach relies on a novel fine separator structure enhanced by microwave-heat transfer for efficient in-flow droplet evaporation. The investigation targets at fundamental studies of the combined effect of droplet flow filtering and heat transfer from numerical calculations and experimentation. As novel fine separators, solid open-cell foams are a promising alternative for the separation of liquid droplets suspended in gas flows at comparably low pressure drops. Using susceptors, such as dielectric materials, for the skeleton and exposing them to microwaves is an efficient way to use them as heating elements. Silicon carbide (SiC) based open-cell foam samples were considered for the study as they are good susceptor materials. First, pore-scale fluid numerical simulations on representative foam models were used to obtain a deeper insight into the effects of pore size and pore density on the droplet retention time within foams. Numerical findings were reported considering the pressure gradient and the residence time distribution of droplets under different superficial flow velocities, droplet sizes, porosities and pore densities. Next, the temperature-dependent permittivity of SiC-based foam materials was determined by the cavity perturbation technique using a waveguide resonator at a microwave frequency of 2.45 GHz up to 200 °C. The permittivity was of particular interest as it is a crucial parameter for predicting and designing systems utilizing microwave heating. Along the permittivity measurements, electromagnetic wave propagation simulations were used to derive novel mixing relations describing the effective permittivity of foams while considering their skeletal morphology. The derived relations facilitate an efficient and reliable estimation of the effective permittivity of open-cell foams, producing good agreement to experimental data. Using the foams dielectric properties and the fluid characteristics of droplet-laden streams, a microwave applicator was designed to concentrate the electric field on the open-cell foams. The applicator was constructed for carrying out experimental studies on droplet evaporation removal under different flow velocities, microwave power and different SiC-based foams. Measurements of droplet size, velocity, number density and flux at the inlet and outlet streams of the applicator were performed using a 2D-phase Doppler interferometer. Eventually, it was found from the experimental data analysis that the application of open-cell ceramic foams as a filter medium reduced 99.9 % of the volumetric flow of droplets, while additional microwave exposure increased the reduction to 99.99 %. In addition, microwave-heated foams prevent droplet re-entrainment and structure-borne liquid accumulation within foams, thus avoiding water clogging and flooding. Hence, open-cell foams can be used as fine droplet separators as long as microwave heating may effectively evaporate accumulations of liquid. An important factor in designing future devices based on this microwave heating approach is the temperature, as it changes the arcing breakdown voltage of the gas, thus limiting the microwave input power and droplet flow velocity. Although more investigations are needed to develop an applicable and optimal product, the results presented in this thesis provide a first insight into the viability of using microwave heating and fine filtering as a compact solution for droplet removal.

Avec l'explosion économique et démographique, le besoin en matériaux poreux tels que la nourriture, le bois ou la brique connait une croissance telle que leur commerce est très actif dans le monde entier. La déshydratation des milieux poreux étant l'une des plus importantes et stables méthodes pour leur préservation, il est parfois nécessaire d'utiliser cette méthode pour stocker, transporter et mieux utiliser ces matériaux. Depuis la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, il existe des méthodes de chauffage RF dans bien des domaines. Bien que beaucoup de nouvelles technologies de chauffage sont devenues extrêmement importantes du point de vue commercial et très largement utilisées, le chauffage RF est préféré aux autres moyens de chauffage pour plusieurs raisons: 1) le résultat est plus rapide, nécessitant un moindre temps pour atteindre la température désirée; 2) le chauffage radiofréquence peut être spatialement plus uniforme que les méthodes conventionnelles de chauffage; 3) le chauffage par radiofréquences peut être allumé ou éteint instantanément; 4) il est plus efficace pour un grand volume de nourriture; 5) l'investissement nécessaire est moindre, etc. Cependant on trouve très peu d'information sur le chauffage radiofréquence pour la déshydratation des matériaux poreux dans la littérature. Par conséquent, il est intéressant d'étudier les interactions entre les radiofréquences et les milieux poreux. Afin d'améliorer le taux d'énergie radiofréquence utilisé, cette thèse propose une cavité coaxiale pour étudier le cycle de chauffage radiofréquence d'une pomme de terre dans différents états : solide, liquide et gazeux. Dans un premier temps nous avons étudié les mécanismes de transport de masse et de chaleur dans le milieu poreux sans radiofréquence sur le modèle d'une brique 1D à l'aide d'un code Matlab. Les résultats de simulation ont été comparés qualitativement avec ceux du papier de référence. A partir de ce modèle, nous avons construit et simulé un modèle 2D axisymétrique avec le chauffage radiofréquence périodique d'une pomme de terre. L’équation de Landau et Lifshitz, Looyenga a été utilisées pour prédire le changement de permittivité effective dans la simulation car il est difficile d'obtenir une donnée précise pour un milieu poreux. La salinité de l'échantillon chauffé (qui est une caractéristique très importante) a été estimée. Les effets de différentes périodes, hauteurs de l'échantillon et puissances de la distribution en température ont été étudiés et analysés. Nous avons également mené des expériences similaires pour mesurer les changements de température durant le processus de chauffage. Tous les résultats de simulations sont comparés qualitativement avec les résultats mesurés. De même nous avons effectué des analyses de sensibilité et en avons conclu quelques suggestions concernant l'amélioration des effets du chauffage. A partir de ces suggestions, nous avons proposé un nouveau modèle de chauffage radiofréquence afin de s'affranchir des défauts du modèle précédent. / With the rapid growth of economic and population explosion, the demands for porous media such as foods, woods and bricks enlarge so wildly that their trades are busy around the world. To be stored, transported and utilized better, dehydration of porous media is necessary since drying is one of the most important and stable methods for preserving materials. After World War two, possible RF heating in many domains was suggested. Even though a lot of novel heating technologies have become extremely commercially important and been widely used, RF heating is preferred to the other heating means for several significant reasons: 1) it is rapid and requires less time to come up to the desired process temperature; 2) radio frequency heating may be relatively spatially more uniform than conventional heating; 3) radio frequency heating systems can be turned on or off instantly; 4) it is better for large, thick food; 5) it requires lower investment costs, and so on. However, little information on radio frequency heating for commercial drying of porous media is available in the published literature. Therefore, it will be interesting to research the interaction between RF and porous media. This thesis, to improve the use ratio of RF energy further, proposed a coaxial cell to research RF cycling heating potato with different phases: solid, liquid and gas. The mechanism of mass and heat transport in the porous media without RF energy was studied first by solving the governing equations of 1D brick model with Matlab codes. The calculated results compared qualitatively with those in the reference paper. Based on that model, an axisymmetric 2D model with periodically RF heating potato was built and simulated. Landau and Lifshitz, Looyenga equation was employed to predict the effective permittivity change in the simulation since it is difficult to get the accurate measurement data of porous media. The salinity of heated sample- a very important parameter of the mixing rule-was estimated. The effects of different process period, variation of height of sample and power on the temperature distributions were studied and analyzed. Corresponding experiments were also conducted to measure the temperature change during the heating process. All the simulated results compared qualitatively with the measured ones. Sensitivity analysis was also done and some suggestions on the improvement of heating effect were concluded. Based on the suggestions, a new RF heating model was proposed to overcome the drawbacks of our previous model.