Microwave technique allows energy-efficient chemical reactions

"Focused thermal energy at atomic microwave antenna sites for ecocatalysis" (2025) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady4043

I've also been seeing people use household microwaves and silicon carbide crucibles for glass and metal casting (bronze, aluminium etc.). The crucibles themselves are made in the microwave. Having seen the vast amount of gas used to liquefy a larger crucible of bronze, taking several hours, I think metal casting is another industry overdue for change.

Large vats benefit a lot from having a better surface area to volume.

The microwave is not necessarily better at large scale, and the microwave transformer itself will have inefficiencies.

But at small scales. .yeah

Yet another example of microwaves being good at heating everything but the actual food you want to heat up.

that's so obvious in hindsight! was this really not discovered before?

oh, it goes back to the 1980's

https://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i4/Microwave-Chemistry-Remai...