A theory is presented of anomalous resistivity and particle heating in current-driven plasma accelerators such as the magnetoplasmadynamic thruster ~MPDT!. An electromagnetic dielectric tensor is used for a current-carrying, collisional and finite-beta plasma and it is found that an instability akin to the generalized lower hybrid drift instability ~GLHDI! exists for electromagnetic modes ~i.e....

Alternatives to traditional actuators such as electromagnetic motors are needed in applications where space and weight are limited, for example, laparoscopic medical probes, miniature robotics, and micro-lens positioning systems. We present a family of small light-weight actuators that can be composed out of a basic unit-cell to yield linear, rotational, and surface actuation. The unit-cell act...

.................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................ 10 1.1 The waste tire ............................................................................. 10 1.2 Methods for recycling waste tires ............................................. 13 1.2.1 L...

Biomass was subjected to conventional and microwave pyrolysis, to determine the influence of each process on the yield and composition of the derived gas, oil and char products. The influence of pyrolysis temperature and heating rate for the conventional pyrolysis and the microwave power was investigated. Two major stages of gas release were observed during biomass pyrolysis, the first being CO...

Continuous flow microwave heating is a promising alternative to conventional heating for aseptic processing of low-acid vegetable purees. However, non-uniform temperature distribution and control of processing parameters are the major hurdles in the implementation of continuous flow microwave heating. This study was undertaken to overcome issues associated with the scale-up of a continuous flow...

A microwave-enhanced, rapid and efficient homogeneous-phase version of the Sonogashira reaction is presented. It has been applied to the coupling of aryl iodides, bromides, triflates, and aryl chloride, as well as pyridine and thiophene derivatives with trimethylsilylacetylene. Excellent yields (80-95%) for substrates containing a large variety of substituents in different positions are obtaine...

An environmentally friendly Matsuda-Heck reaction with arenediazonium tosylates has been developed for the first time. A range of alkenes was arylated in good to quantitative yields in water. The reaction is significantly accelerated when carried out under microwave heating. The arylation of haloalkylacrylates with diazonium salts has been implemented for the first time.

A rapid, sensitive, and simple method was developed to detect the sapstain fungi Ophiostoma piceae and O. quercus in stained wood. By using microwave heating for DNA extraction and PCR with internal transcribed spacer-derived-specific primers, detection was feasible within 4 h, even with DNA obtained from a single synnema. This method can easily be extended for the detection of other wood-inhab...

The development of micro-power generators for centrifugal microfluidic discs enhances the platform as a green point-of-care diagnostic system and eliminates the need for attaching external peripherals to the disc. In this work, we present micro-power generators that harvest energy from the disc's rotational movement to power biomedical applications on the disc. To implement these ideas, we deve...

A numeric model was developed to couple electromagnetic (EM) and thermal field calculations in packaged foods moving in pressurized 915 MHz microwave (MW) cavities with circulating water at above 120 C. This model employed a commercial EM package with a customized heat transfer sub-model to solve EM field and thermal field equations. Both methods applied finite-difference timedomain (FDTD) meth...