3-DAY DISTANCE LEARNING COURSE

17-19 January 2018

Practical Information

  • The course is intended for students, postdocs, researchers, but also non-specialist individuals working in companies and non-academic institutions.
  • It will take place over three days, from Wednesday, 17 to Friday, 19 January 2018. The participants will be informed about the exact time of the course one week in advance.
  • UNRF will send a log-in password to each one of the participants prior to the commencement of the course.
  • Upon completion of the course, each participant will receive a ‘Certificate of Attendance’.
  • The material for the course will be available for download by the participants in advance.
  • The course fee is 330 EUR and should be paid by Tuesday, 16 January 2018.
  • Download the Expression of Interest Form and Application Form.

About the Course

Nowadays, there is a lot of interest in Microwave Heating Technology that contains many challenges.  In this workshop, the technology for the daily life convenience of using Microwaves will be presented. The critical Microwave Heating parameters and the infrastructure for current (or future) research and development for a multi-billion dollar-valued industry worldwide will be explained.

Historically, Dr Percy Spencer, a Radar Engineer in Raytheon Co., USA, is credited with inventing the Microwave Heating process.  Actually, in 1945, he observed that a candy bar in his shirt pocket had melted when he was near a microwave generator (magnetron).  A year later, Dr Spencer patented and presented the first microwave heating machine. Over the next seven decades, great progress was made. We now have machines for industrial applications that cost thousands to millions of dollars. At the same time, we have microwave ovens with a market penetration in the EU and the USA of more than 90% that cost less than 50 dollars per unit.

Most of the people who are involved in microwave heating are from disciplines other than Electrical Engineering and/or Physical Science. Usually, their introduction and involvement are only through domestic microwave ovens. Many Engineers and Scientists have little in-depth knowledge of the subject. The microwave heating process involves complex interactions between wide-ranging disciplines, such as electromagnetics, dielectric properties, heat transfer, moisture transfer, solid mechanics, fluid flow, chemistry, microbiology, and packaging. Our effort is to link these disciplines and give a comprehensive treatise on microwave processing that demystifies the microwave heating of materials.

The workshop will offer an introduction to Electromagnetics for relatively non-familiar people and will go on to cover Microwave Engineering. For several engineers and scientists, Electromagnetics is considered a difficult subject. In addition, there is an impression that it is an area with only a lot of mathematics and few job prospects. Our intent is to dispel this myth and provide, in a simple and clear way, a comprehensive overview, at a level needed to analyze, design and develop products by using microwave heating. We will explain the theory and techniques most widely used for developing the above systems. We will also discuss the ongoing state of the art in a number of application domains in which heating is truly the key to the developments.

The workshop aims to prepare the participants for a possible interest of this kind of work and to give them ideas for a future career.

A rough outline of the lectures:

  • PART 1:

Basics of Microwave Heating, Material Geometry & Dielectric Properties on Heating Performance, Heating Uniformity Problems, Microwave Heaters & Ovens.

  • PART 2:

Measurements of Dielectric Properties of Materials in Microwaves, Dielectric Properties of Materials/Foods & Other Substances, Flavors & Colors for Foods in MW, Microwave Packaging Problems.

  • PART 3:

Susceptors for Microwave Heating, Shielding & Field Modification, Product Development & Testing in MW Heating, Regulations & Safety Standards, Global Market & Industrial Applications.

Instructor’s Bio

John N. Sahalos received B.S. degree in Physics, M.S. degree in Electronic Physics, BCE & MCE degrees in Civil Engineering and a PhD in Electronic Physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece. He has almost four decades of teaching experience at both the undergraduate & graduate level. Prof. Sahalos was the founder and director of the Microwaves Laboratory at the ECE Department of the University of Thrace. He was also the director of Post-graduate studies and the founder and director of the Radio-Communications Laboratory at AUTH for more than 20 years. Since 2010, he has been with the Department of Engineering at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. Prof. Sahalos is with the University of Nicosia Research Foundation, (UNRF), where he is involved in several research projects. He was a postdoc at the Ohio State University and a visiting faculty member at the University of Colorado and the Technical University of Madrid. He was also on the board of directors of the National Research & Technology Committee of Greece and on the board of directors of OTE S.A., the largest Telecommunications Company in Southeastern Europe. In addition to his academic duties, he is now a Coordinator of the R&D advisory board at a High Tech Industry.

Prof. Sahalos was the national president of the URSI for more than a decade and a delegate & auditor in the EuRAAP organization for five years. He is an IEEE Life Fellow, an Honorary Fellow of the Electronic Physics Society, a Fellow of the Physical Society and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece.

He is the author of four books and of more than 450 articles published in scientific journals. His research interests include Antennas, Radio-communications, EMC/EMI, RFIDs, Microwaves, and Biomedical Engineering. Together with his colleagues, he designed innovative products like the EIT, the MLS, the ORAMA simulator and the SMS-K monitoring system.