CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

tThis work was aimed to study the water vapor transport inside microwave ovens (MWO),both experimentally and through mathematical modeling and simulation. The evaporatedwater from foods must be purged from the oven to prevent its accumulation. When vaporreaches the oven cold walls, it may condense and produces drops, which continue to growuntil they eventually fall. This can cause damage to the containers due to the rapid heatingof the water on them. In this work, the airflow circulating inside an MWO was experimen-tally determined. Afterwards, a 3D model of the MWO geometry was built and the air inletand outlet sections were approximated with rectangles. Given the low measured airflow alaminar model was sufficient to simulate the airflow inside the oven. Various airflow simula-tions were performed inside the oven. After that, heating experiments with water in a glasswere carried out (power: 10, 20 and 30%); the humidity and temperature of the outlet air andthe water temperature on the glass during the process were measured. Subsequently, thegeometry of the glass with water and the magnetron and waveguide were incorporated intothe model, in such a way that includes the energy and mass balance. The electromagneticfield in the oven and the fluid dynamics in air were solved in steady state, and then thevelocity field was used to solve the energy and mass balance in transient state in the air.The accuracy of humidity and temperature predictions were acceptable compared to theexperimental values.