Microwave chemistry applications have been investigated for more than three decades. Contrary to common cavity-based microwave applicators, the traveling-wave microwave reactor has the potential to enable the process scale-up, a better coupling of microwave energy with microwave-susceptible catalysts, and consequently highly uniform microwave heating. In this work, the engineering challenges entailed with the design of a traveling-wave microwave waveguide are explained and appropriate solutions developed. A new traveling-wave microwave reactor with a coaxial waveguide structure is presented. Simulation results show that there is no standing wave generated along the structure. Furthermore, in order to keep the impedance matching and minimize the microwave reflections while the reactor is loaded with catalyst samples, new reactor’s loading patterns are introduced. Simulation results showed that for the proposed method, microwave-susceptible catalytic fixed-bed could interact more efficiently with microwave energy and produce a uniform heating profile.

微波化学的应用已经研究了三十多年。与普通的基于腔的微波施加器相反，行波微波反应器具有扩大工艺规模，使微波能量与微波敏感性催化剂更好地耦合以及因此实现高度均匀的微波加热的潜力。在这项工作中，解释了行波微波波导设计带来的工程挑战，并开发了适当的解决方案。提出了一种新型的同轴波导行波微波反应器。仿真结果表明，沿结构没有产生驻波。此外，为了在反应器装载催化剂样品时保持阻抗匹配并最大程度地减少微波反射，引入了新的反应堆装载方式。仿真结果表明，对于该方法，微波敏感的催化固定床可以更有效地与微波能量相互作用，并产生均匀的加热曲线。