Permittivity measurements of mixtures as a function of their composition for microwave heating improving

Microwave heating is a more efficient alternative to conventional heating in the chemical reactions field due to its positive effects on conversion and reaction kinetics. Dielectric properties of substances and mixtures are important for the optimization of microwave heating processes; notwithstanding this, specific databases are poor and far from being complete, and in the scientific literature only a few data regarding these properties can be found. Dielectric properties are represented by permittivity, which is a complex measure of a substance behaviour in the presence of an electromagnetic field and depends on the field frequency, as well as on the temperature and composition of the chemical system under study. In this work, some real and imaginary parts of permittivity measurements were carried out using a specially designed measurement system. The apparatus was tested in the estimation of permittivity values in water-ethanol mixtures, varying their composition. The results were compared to literature data and fitted with available literature models to verify their trend as a function of composition. The permittivity real part values increase with reducing the molar fraction of ethanol, whereas the imaginary part decreases, according to the values of water and ethanol permittivity reported in the literature. The regressions carried out to describe the permittivity dependence on composition prove that the measured values can be well described by the models taken into account.